Silence in D6
by Pollardinator
Summary: The diary of a Russian soldier before and during the nuclear war of 2013. With the world outside ready for all-out war Major Videnski finds his unit posted to the top secret bunker D6. But as cabin fever and fascism take hold and the bodies begin to pile up,the major is forced to endure a horrific experience with the bunker descending into insanity as the surface is turned to ash.
1. 1st June 2013

The diary of Quartermaster Josef Videnski, Russian Army

1st June 2013

I can't believe I agreed to write this journal, but my wife has insisted. Katerina has always been the boss in our marriage. I remember her words as I picked up my kitbag from the front door and was about to leave our tiny Moscow apartment. She handed me this leather-bound notebook, my name in gold on the front, said to me that she wanted me to write in it every day, so,if anything happened ,she would have something to remember me by. Thinking back as I write this, it seemed a bit extreme! But I could hardly refuse. I know nothing about this latest posting, something so secret even our battalion commander doesn't know about it. All I know is that, whatever it is, I'll be there at least a month, and will have no contact of any sort from the outside world. To be honest it's kind of scaring me, and the rest of the men are feeling it too. Things in the world just aren't right at the moment, I remember on the news about how the United Nations was 'dissolved indefinitely' how the American ambassador said he would never make deals with an 'evil empire' like Russia. I don't know what this is, but whatever it is, seems units from all over are being mobilised. Our boys are out on the borders now, staring down the Chinese and NATO, daring them to step onto our soil. I just hope things can be resolved, go back to normal. Or things could get a lot worse…

A/N Just a quick note to any of you reading going over this story again I've been finding specific pieces of the Metro 2033 soundtrack that 'go' with each part ,at least I think ,if you want an extra level of depth to each section just search the music in brackets at the top of each chapter. Thanks for reading!


	2. 2nd June 2013

2nd June 2013

We arrived at our unit's barracks on the outskirts of Moscow today, and, before we could even unpack our kit, the call went up that we were on the move again. The entire battalion, all nine hundred men, was up and into a convoy of trucks and on the road before midday. Bit of an achievement really, our battalion, like the rest of the Russian Army, is prone to desertion, last roll call we had only about three quarters of our numbers. But now, as I write this, in the back of a dirty old lorry which seems to be older than most of its occupants, one word seems to be on everyone's lips, passed by word of mouth from the lieutenant colonel himself. For some reason, a slight shiver went down my spine as Sergeant Vasily, one of my aides, whispered it to us. A slight sense of foreboding even ,at that name.

D6.


	3. 3rd June 2013

3rd June 2013

Today has been…difficult. We had spent the day driving through Moscow; a journey that would have taken about an hour but took over five hours because of the amount of other battalions and military divisions out in force. We saw a tank squadron deployed outside the Kremlin, soldiers on every street corner, a pair of Hind gunships roaring over us as we came near the old Lenin Library. There was a platoon of men outside, who we all glared at enviously. The lucky sods had the safest posting in the whole city, guarding the sensitive documents in the basement and in the library itself. Our destination however, was a bit less interesting, just a muddy field by a disused railway track that led underground. It was raining as the entire battalion was made to stand ,in full uniform and with all kit and weaponry, in the pouring rain .As we did this, a gaggle of sinister men in suits,probably FSB agents, were talking to Lieutenant Colonel Antonov. We didn't dare ask why they were there, especially not the older men, those who had served in the Red Army only twenty or so years ago.

But then any murmurs or whispers from the men behind was silenced, as one of the agents addressed us, in a thin and nasal voice, the sort of government spook who most of us wouldn't mind wringing the neck of, knowing the reputation of some men in the FSB.I can't remember much of his speech, I had been spending the past hour making sure the supplies on the convoy were distributed amongst the men. All I can remember from that speech today is something about 'our great duty to the motherland' and other shit, the sort of thing you would expect some Red Army commissar to spout. But, no sooner had he gone than Colonel Antonov was bawling at us to get into position, ready to march into the tunnels beyond. It was all so unreal, the entire company descending into that dark abyss, lit by weak electric lights and our own torches, like some underworld gateway.

We must have been walking for an hour or so, nothing but the crunch of boots and muttering of the FSB agents to Lieutenant Colonel Antonov at the front of the column to break the silence. All the supplies, extra weapons, rations, ammunition and all the myriad things the battalion needs to function, were all going to be brought by train once we had reached our destination. All for me and my staff to spend to hours cataloguing and moving to storage once we got to this place. I didn't know what it was at the time exactly, this mystery place, but I wasn't accepting anything big. We were only a standard battalion, nothing particularly distinguished, not like the arrogant pricks in other divisions who could trace their unit back to bloody Stalingrad! But, with international relations with the rest of the world at an all-time low, our entire army was deployed everywhere, from the borders all the way to tiny villages in the Arctic Circle. But for us, as we found when we turned the corner in the tunnel, our posting was a bit less obvious.

The order came to halt as we came to a huge steel door set in the tunnel ahead, the train lines stopping abruptly as they reached it. Antonov and the other officers were bawling out orders to halt and form up along the line, as, with a great grinding of metal, the door swung open and the entire battalion started to march inside in one massive column.

I only had a second to look as we tramped inside, but I clearly saw the sign above the door, peeled out in bright yellow paint on the dark concrete-D6. But there was no time to look before we had stepped through the doorway, the ten foot thick door yawning open to a long concrete corridor, lit by bright white bulbs in the walls.

We were almost like excited children being let into fathers private study for the first time, this place was so empty and secret; it almost felt wrong for me to put my muddy footprints on the clean floor. All of us wanted to see more of this but we were instead steered into a series of dormitories, one for each platoon, filled with cast iron beds where everybody just fell onto, even the threadbare grey mattress offering a world of comfort for our tired company. The only thing I wonder now, is, why are we here?


	4. 4th June 2013

4th June 2013

The supply train came today, packed with what seemed like tons of equipment and supplies for the bunker. Soon as I woke up, must have been about 6pm,I had the colonel bawling orders at me, wanting my team up and at the station outside the doors in the next five minutes. Antonov had always been a tight arsed bastard, but this is completely out of character. He's never been an agreeable sort, but these past few days he's been particularly bitter. We assembled out on the concrete platform outside the huge door we entered yesterday, still yawning open for us to cart the supplies through later. The train was filled with everything we would ever need, and a few things we didn't mean, why do we need flamethrowers in an underground bunker. The amount of weapons as well. Over a thousand AK-74M assault rifles, around 900 Makarov pistols,50 RPG-7 launchers and even a selection of the new AK 2012 rifles, about 200 or so. We had to check off each one by hand, Private Vasily lifting them out of the crates, me ticking them off on the list, checking serial numbers and the like, before Sergei and Vlasov crated them up again. From there we had a whole platoon of men shifting each deeper into the bunker, to the storerooms we had opened up today.

Must have been working for over ten hours, only pausing for some stale rations, and it felt like we were working under the boots of the Tsars a century ago. Every time we so much as stopped a nearby officer gave us a look, and that was enough to get us back to work. I'm scared now what might happen if we're in this bunker too long…


	5. 5th June 2013

5th June 2013

We finally saw the rest of the base today and….just wow, it's huge. It was just the senior officers first, me looking slightly out of place as we walked through the empty corridors deeper into the facility, which up until now we had had strict orders not to go to. We had been silent the entire time, as we came to an empty floodlit station, the only sound a faint humming from the train tunnel beyond.

We were stood there for a few minutes, and I was almost about to pluck up the courage to ask the major next to what the hell we were waiting for when the train came. It just slid into the station, completely automatically, a silver phantom like vehicle, all clean and new. It was like nothing I had seen before, even better than the clean metro trains me and my wife saw on a holiday to Washington DC, before the whole world seemed to go to shit.

The area that the train took us too seemed like something from science fiction, a huge space, bigger than ten football pitches at least, the station platform we stood at suspended high above it, monorails and other automatic trains sitting silent on spindly steel rails. The whole place was like a giant missile silo, extending far downwards, concrete platforms and walkways crossing over the empty cavern of granite and steel. Down at the bottom, Antonov was saying, theres a full sized nuclear reactor powering the entire complex, before we continued on with the tour. The whole battalions going to be moved here tomorrow, it seems, and that means we're going to have to go through the painstaking process of cataloguing every single piece of equipment all over again when it gets , the great life of a quartermaster!


	6. 8th June 2013

8th June 2013

I haven't had a chance to write the past few days, things have just been mental since we started the shift to the main base. Turns out the dank hole that was what we spent the past two days in was nothing but a holding area for us and the supplies. And now I've been assigned a tiny office near the main control room where the rest of the senior staff are now firmly entrenched in, and been drafted a huge new workload.

Of course, with such a massive movement of the whole battalion, the supplies and weaponry have to come too. For me and my staff it was a matter of getting some of the men to help, every time one of the silver trains swept in, Vasily would be sprinting to one of the barracks, dragging a slightly angered mob of soldiers to cart the kit down to the warehouse.

I'm writing this on my break, must be about 8pm, and I've been cataloguing crates of gas masks for about two hours. I was a few hundred in when one of the senior officers, that tight arsed bastard Captain Delov, came swaggering in. Most of the main command had spent the day in the nice warm command centre, whilist the rest of us freeze in 'the Atrium' (The name many of the men are calling the vast main area).

I remember his sneer, the stench of drink on his breath; we had delivered a case of spirits up to them in the afternoon, as he laughed.

"The men have been saying you got the supplies sorted. Good work I must say but that's just the tip of the iceberg…"

I don't know what the hell he was saying, but, judging by the drunken laughter that had been streaming out of the command for the past hour, he wasn't in the most 'professional' of moods. If the public could see this, the protectors of Mother Russia wasted on cheap Ukrainian booze!


	7. 9th June 2013

9th June 2013

Seems like that drunken shit Delov was right, this bunker is full of surprises. I came to the command centre this morning, filled with technicians trying to wire the place up. There's been a rash of blackouts the past few days, from what some of the men are saying, the reactor in the basement is from the old Soviet days so is about as reliable as any of the technology from that era. The amount of times I've had to recall some of the crap we give our boys to use, especially the '_Yudashkin's uniform' incident a few years back…_

_The other occupants of the room were the command staff, the lieutenant colonel and his gang. Delov gave me a glare, but he was looking a little worse for wear after last night's piss up. None of them were in the best shape really; even the steely Lieutenant Colonel Antonov himself was trembling slightly as he read a report in a darkened corner. Some of them were absent, probably clogging up the septic tanks with splashes of vomit and lurid sprits._

But Captain Delov was coherent enough to snap a curt command at me.

"Major Videnski! Lieutenant Colonel Antonov wants you down at Storeroom 5-B. Organising that should keep you busy…" he added with a smirk.

Arrogant prick. Technically I outrank pretty much all the command staff, most are captains and lieutenants, but all of them seem to treat me in the same way as most of the standard troops. Other quartermasters I've spoken to get the same, even though without us lot supplying their weapons and supplies they're just starving thugs in tatty uniforms! You would have thought the man who makes sure all their equipment is in working order would get more respect but, really, I just tend to keep my head down. It's the only way to survive in this shitstorm of an army.

Storeroom 5-B turned out to be halfway across the base, so I was soon on one of the slightly precarious monorail systems, on the radio to Vasily and the others to get down and meet me at the storeroom as soon as possible.

As the ugly yellow train rolled up to a halt outside the cavernous red steel door of the storeroom it seemed Vasily and the rest of my staff were there already. Corporal Dakker was standing over by the door controls, and he threw me a half arsed salute as he set the huge door to open. Can't blame him really. Whilst the other officers were getting pissed I was up late with my men, stacking up crates of weapons and ammunition in the main armoury, whilst all the other supplies had to be taken to other parts of the bunker. It must have taken me and Dakker half an hour just to find the main medical centre, all the while lugging a cart full of surgical equipment for Doctor Talos, who was already snowed in with men faking illness just to get a good rest from the torturous schedule command had us on.

The huge door was soon open, and I remember us walking into the darkness, the lights flickering on slowly. As the room revealed itself, Dakker was the first to break the silence.

"Fuck… The guys who built this place didn't mess about."

The room, if you could call it that, it was more of a warehouse, was massive, like the rest of this place. The architects who designed D6 obviously didn't have a sense of scale. But the size was irrelevant; it was the contents of the room which were the craziest. Ranked like a silent parade, dozens of vehciles, artillery pieces, everything an army much bigger than ours would ever need was sat there, gathering dust.

There were T-90's, sat like squat beetles, rows of BMP troop transports, even the ugly silhouette of a Hind gunship near the back. And then the weapons. Like an American gun nuts wet dream. There were no shitty AK's here, it was all sleek and modern, Western, guns. There were P-90's, MP5's, British SA-80's; the things men like us could only dream of .All the sort of stuff even patriotic Antonov would sell to the Mafia in a heartbeat. I don't know why they were here, and how they had got here anyway. Maybe UN membership wasn't as bad as Putin always said.

But, whilst all the others were muttering about how much time this job would take, only one thought was going through my mind.

What the hell were we doing down here?


	8. 14th June 2013

14th June 2013

I know I've been saying this over and over again but its hell down here. I must have had about four hours of sleep a day since Antonov pushed up the workload even further. All this week so far has been trying to check over every last piece of equipment in ALL the storerooms. Not just the one we found five days ago filled with weapons. So far we've finished that one and 4-B, which was stacked to the rafters with field rations, enough to last us for the next century probably.

But it's not the massive workload that's really scaring me, nor the ridiculous supplies we have, more than enough for your standard missile silo, and for the amout of men we have. Dakker calculated we have enough food to feed at least another two hundred personnel, but the only people here is our battalion. The FSB agents we first saw when we entered this shithole seemed to have slithered off to god knows where and frankly, I think I speak for most of the regiment when I say we never want them back…


	9. 15th June 2013

15th June 2013

The FSB agents returned today, and they brought some friends this time. I was out at the entrance in the old 'holding area' for all our supplies with Privates Sergei and Vlasov when there was a grinding screech of metal. Instantly I rushed out, a hand on my sidearm, a bit over the top yes, but I've been on edge for a while now…What I saw when I got there though was…ridiculous almost.

The huge steel door, which had been locked since we got here, was open, and the lights from a train outside blazed into the small holding area we stood in. The guards at the gate looked as confused as we were; lazily hefting their AK's to challenge the new arrivals.

But they were greeted by one of the FSB agents, swathed in a black overcoat and calmly flashing his identification at the guards in the same way someone gives a middle finger in a Western country. Then in behind him came a long line of men and women in white lab coats, all shivering a little, either at the cold or the group of soldiers all staring at them like they were Martians or something. Whereas the slimy FSB agent, along with his cronies, exuded arrogance and a superior attitude, these scientists were all on edge, wide eyed and looking around everywhere in curiosity.

All of them were carrying something; large crates marked with red A's, scientific equipment, bits of piping and metal, all completely incomprehensible to me and the other men, and all the others did was stare. It seemed like so long since we had seen anybody not in a military uniform, and now there were over fifty people just waltzing into one of the most secretive military installations in the whole of Russia like they were on a fucking nature walk! I found myself laughing a bit, earning a look from Private Vlasov next to me, and before I could stop one of the FSB agents had stormed over.

The man was tiny, barely coming up to my shoulder .I'm not a particularly huge man myself, not like some of the troll like thugs we've had shifting supplies for us the past few days, but even I looked like a muscular giant compared to this little rat. But the agent's voice quickly silenced me; it dripped with menace, like some Hollywood psychopath.

"Something funny private?"

"It's Major actually…"

The agent grinned slightly.

"I am so sorry…major…what were you wanting to say exactly before I so rudely cut you off?"

I was so tempted to punch the little prick right now, and frankly, if some of his friends and the scientists hadn't been here, I could have easily got away with it.

"Only that, as official quartermaster for this facility, I need to have a look at these new supplies being brought here."

The agent sniggered like a little child about to tell on somebody.

"No, I'm sorry major, but these people, and anything they may bring with them, is exclusively under the control of the FSB and Ministry of Defence. I would advise you to stay out of business that does not concern you. The consequences may be…"

The little creep was interrupted in his rant by a sudden crash of metal, and we both turned, along with every other person in the room, to the source of the noise.

One of the soldiers nearby ,who had been carrying metal crates from the train outside with the rest of his squad, had dropped the heavy object, and it now sat on the concrete floor, everybody around it stopping, especially, the scientists and FSB agents, who all jumped back instantly. The man who had dropped the crate grimaced and went to pick it up again, before suddenly there was the click of a pistol being drawn. As one, we all looked at the head FSB agent, who had drawn his Vektor pistol, its short barrel aimed directly in the soldier's face.

"Not…another…step." He said coldly, and then walked toward the crate, gun still trained on the terrified soldier.

As the agent bent down to examine the crate, I saw a few men raising their rifles. But then Captain Delov was storming in, silently shaking his head and the soldiers lowered their weapons.

There was complete silence in the room as the agent simply said.

"The container is not compromised. Carry on…"

Instantly everybody in the room breathed a silent sigh of relief and went back to their duties, the FSB agent calmly withdrawing his pistol inside his overcoat.

AS I watched however, it didn't seem things were back to normal as the scientists trooped further into the complex. The main FSB agent strode over to Delov, pulling him aside and hissing something into the man's ear.

I don't know what he actually said, but, as the agent swept away, I went over to Delov, who was now white as a ghost, all the colour drained from his face.

"What is it?" I snapped, excepting another sarcastic response.

But the captain's reply was nothing like that, almost a whimper, all his arrogant bluster lost as he spoke softly. I barely heard the man, but there was one word that stuck in my head, and, as I heard it, I knew things were about to get a lot worse.

Spetsnaz.


	10. 18th June 2013

18th June 2013

The past few days have been almost…relaxed. The scientists seem to have disappeared since we saw them a few days ago, everyone's saying they've gone down to a lab complex further down in the facility, near to the all I care they can rot down there. After seeing a man almost get shot over dropping a container full of, I don't know, fucking test tubes or something, I'm starting to think that if those FSB spooks hadn't come back in the first place, we would all be better off. But, unfortunately they're still here, spending all their time over in the command centre with Antonov. For the rest of the base though, this is the closest we've had to down time since we got here. With Antonov trying not to piss off the FSB agents, pretty much everybody in the base has been taking a well-earned break. For me, that means spending my time in the Holding Area, as far away as possible from Antonov and the FSB pricks.  
It could have been nice almost, the equivalent of a holiday in this sunless hell, and it was, in a way, that is, until they arrived…

I was on a break, with a cup of dirt like coffee in hand, and down at the gate. I seem to be drawn to it now, this entrance to a world that we can't go back to until this whole mess resolves itself. I hope Katerina appreciates me writing this, because I'm starting to think that, if things start to get crazy around here, Antonov isn't exactly going to like people writing about what goes on in this pit.

The men at the gate saluted me half-heartedly as I approached, and I was about to strike up a conversation when one of the lookouts, peering at a grainy computer screen, suddenly shouted.

"There's a train coming! Open the gates!"

I know it seems like our security's a bit lax, but we're that far down in the ground that anybody who comes here knows about the place, and has some official reason to be here. And, as the gate slowly creaked open with a roar of steel, everybody in the room was blinded by a blazed of harsh white light.

One brave, or maybe foolish, man stepped out, gun raised, and barked a challenge.

"Identify yourselves!"

The response however, made the soldier go pale, as a towering figure stepped forward.

"Your fucking worst nightmare…"

There, silhouetted in the light from the train outside, was a huge, thickset man in the unmistakeable uniform of a Spetnatz commander, AK slung over his shoulder, what can only be described as an almost physcotic look in his eye. He smiled, but there was no warmth behind it, only menace.

The guard made to step back, but the Spetnatz commander was on him in a second, grabbing him by his neck, huge gloved hands constricting his breath.

We weren't going to do anything though; this man looked like he could snap anybody's neck in a heartbeat. We had all heard the horrific stories about the training these men went through, and you either had to be as tough as fuck or a psychopath to survive. This guy was probably both.

"Get your commanding officer..." He hissed to the soldier in his clutches, before dropping him. Without another word, the soldier scuttled off.

The Spetnatz commander laughed, before shouting something incomprehensible into the light beyond, and then the rest of them arrived.

Covered in body armour and bandoliers, assault rifles and evil looking knives at their sides, the Spetnatz men barely looked at us as they marched past in perfect formation onward. None of us challenged them, and when Major Voshilov turned up, red faced and berating the terrified guard who brought him, merely stammered at the Spetznatz swaggering in.

As they disappeared into the corridors beyond, the commander turned to the major, casually ordering.

"Get someone to get our shit from the train, anybody drops it I drop them…"

It was such a simple statement, but everybody there stood in silence except for the hiss of the train outside and tramping of the Spetznatz's boots on concrete nearby.

Fuck, things here just got a whole lot worse.


	11. 27th June 2013

27nd June 2013

I haven't had a chance to write anything recently, things in this bunker have gone from bad to total shitstorm… Events in the world at large are worse than we thought. The news we get in the main mess halls is all government propaganda shit, Russia Today just has Putin's smug face all over it, telling about 'the motherland' and 'honour' and messed up shit like that. Who does he think he is? Stalin? The Tsar? One of the men managed to find a copy of a European newspaper, a French one I think, talking about 'Russia ecume'. Russian scum. Stupid Europeans. Nothing against them personally, but the ones who are always laughing at the 'Russkies' or 'Reds' or 'Ivan' really give a bad name to the West. American news was worse; I was down in the radio room with Dakker and some other technicians, listeing in to foreign news. If Antonov or the FSB shits found us… Well, our obituaries probably won't turn up in the papers anytime soon.

But we had long since stopped listening for the sound of boots on the concrete outside when one particular programme came on. It was a British BBC News radio show, much easier to hack into than the American media, all that 'terrorist' bullshit seems to be the main reason for that. They were all debating current events and, as I translated for the others, my blood ran cold. They kept saying one phrase, over and over again, in between all the crap. And it chilled my bones.

World war.


	12. 30th June 2013

30th June 2013

These Spetnatz fucks can't exactly be called unprepared. We only just finished bringing all their crap to their stores on the eastern end of the bunker. They've taken the whole east side over, all one hundred of them, setting up a checkpoint by the gate, fat fuck with a mounted machine gun sat there, grinning every time we carted some heavy crates up, laughing at the grunts of pain from me shifting a dozen Dragonuv sniper rifles almost a mile from the Holding Area.

Their commander was fortunately over in the Command Centre, whilist the foolish guard he grabbed a week or so ago is still over in the Medical Centre. The psycho practically broke the man's neck.

But, as we threw down a crate full of body armour down in the stores, we were accosted by a mob of the Spetnatz men. They're all huge, like bears or trolls or golems even.

We managed to get out, but only by bribing them with a crate of vodka Delov had demanded at the Command Centre.

I don't know why they're here personally. There's over a thousand men in this facility now, and still nobody knows what the hell is going on down here. This is no missile silo, far as I can guess, nor is it some kind of secret underground vault to keep the population safe. Oh those Americans went apeshit over that, the whole '2012 Apocalypse' bullshit, conspiracy theorists saying Putin had built enough bunkers for the whole country to simply…disappear.  
Did they every stop to think what a logistical nightmare that would be? The amount of space, food, water and weapons you would need for such an insane venture. Impossible. Nowhere on earth could that be done, maybe not even here, and definitely not anywhere outside of here.

I merely thank God nothing like that will ever , maybe we'll be home by Christmas…


	13. 4th July 2013

4th July 2013

Lockdown. That was the fucking word of the day today, Antonov on the PA system for the morning adresss, saying how we were 'In a state of lockdown for the foreseeable future'. For how long? That's the question on everybody's lips, the answer though?

I just don't know… I don't know when the lockdown will be lifted, when I'll see sunlight again, when Katerina will be in my arms again. All of this, this concrete hell. If I could, I would tear it apart with my bare hands, crack the layers of steel and concrete, and the dark underbelly of lies and secrets that keeps it all running, and then just run off into the light. I can sense the men are restless as well. Actually scratch that, they're pissed as hell, getting downright murderous even. These men don't know why the fuck they're here, why their families are out there in the world above them while they rot down in this bunker.

Past few days have been very tense, far as I can tell from my office near the command centre. I don't really trust a lot of the men down in the rest of the base not to tear me apart in some dark corridor. To them, it's us, the officers, who caused all this. Not those FSB fucktards, or the Spetnatz, or even the bastard himself, Putin. It's us, their commanders. I've signed out a new sidearm for myself from the armoury, it's not like anybody's going to care, too many other problems in the world at the moment. A Colt Python, found it in the warehouse with all the foreign guns. Makes me seem like some old movie cowboy…

But, on a less happy note, the Spetnatz has come back in force today. Their commander came striding up the main causeway in the Atrium, bold as brass, in full body armour, AK 2012 at his side, and his entire detachment, a hundred of them, all decked out in body armour, helmets, all that crap ,along with riot shields and tear gas.

As if things couldn't get any fucking worse. With Putin and the American president slagging each other off on the international news networks, and our ports blockaded by the Royal Navy and US Marines, those Spetnatz just know how to make things worse.  
Seems there the ones enforcing the lockdown, taking up positions at all the entrances, with orders to shoot any fucker stupid enough to try and get out.

I only hope tomorrow brings better news.


	14. 5th July 2013

5th July 2013

They did it.

The bastards actually did it.

They unleashed nuclear fire upon the world, and it burnt like hell. I was in the communications room with Dakker and some of the radio staff when the news came crackling through in the morning. When the man on the other end, sobbing like an infant in his last minutes on Earth, just kept repeating one word, which seemed to echo in the silence of the radio room.

Armageddon.

I remember the stillness and quiet across the whole base, how the corridors were filled with soldiers, trained killers, crouched on the concrete, tears in their eyes. As I came into the command centre the room was dark, the only light the huge main screen, the entire command staff, Delov, Antonov, even the Spetnatz commander, watching in horror the scene unfolding.

It was a news bulletin, out on the streets of Moscow far above us, the reporter running down the street in a vast crowd, men, women and children, stampeding on as air raid sirens howled into the morning light. It was sheer madness, people slamming into each other, cars just ploughing into the crowd, their drivers smashing their heads on horns in complete unbridled anger and sorrow.

The camera was shaking as people shoved past, and the reporter was screaming into his microphone, his voice almost lost in the terrified shouts of the crowd around him.

"Get to the Metro!" he kept shouting, over and over, tears streaming down his face. He kept running, and up ahead we could see the towering form of the Metro entrance, its marble edifice seeming to be tantalisingly close to the screaming crowd.

And people were getting inside, soldiers opening the huge iron doors to them, the mob running inside. But then, as the cameraman and reporter came closer, a shout roared overhead, along with a single gunshot. The hope in the reporter's eyes died.

Up ahead the doors were closing, and yet the crowd still hurried forward, roars of anger at the soldiers seeming to block their path.

It was when I saw those soldiers raise their rifles to the crowd that I looked away, trying to ignore the roar of gunfire, and the dying screams of the people being slaughtered.

I forced myself to look, to see the reporter take a bullet to the head and fall to the concrete to be trampled, the camera fall to the ground and point upwards, to the rockets beginning to descend downwards in a plume of smoke.

"Shut it off." Antonov said softly, and then started to bellow at the technicians." Shut it down! Turn it off!"

Captain Delov glanced at me as we watched Antonov fall to his knees, face crumpled up in pain and sorrow, tears flowing down his face.

It was only later that I would realise why this man, this person who up until then we had all written off as a sociopathic robot, had suddenly shown such emotion. The name of the reporter on the news, which had flashed briefly at the bottom of the screen.

Alexei Antonov. The colonel's son.

We've had a few messages over the radio network, mainly from Central Command, telling us that 'we gave them hell', to hold position and maintain lockdown and that 'help is coming'.

Absolute bullshit.

We could be the only people left in Moscow at the moment, according to the scattered news reports before the bombs hit, it seems that over a thousand warheads have been fired at us, mostly American, but British, French and Israeli as well. The whole world. Wiped out in an instant.

And for what?

The only thing which stops me pulling the revolver from my holster and blowing my brains all over this fucking diary is the thought of Katerina. She wouldn't have wanted me to go down that route. She always said suicide was a sin, that if I do that we will never be together in paradise.

All I know is that, if there is a God up there, he stopped listening a long time ago.

Of course, a lot of the men don't have something to hold onto, no rock to keep them chained to this world. As I write this in the gloom of my office, I can hear the muffled cracks of single pistol shots echoing in the darkness, the last sound many of those men out there will ever hear, as they condemn themselves to oblivion.


	15. 6th July 2013

6th July 2013

I sometimes wonder why I'm going on in this nightmare, why I'm doomed to be imprisoned in this bunker forever. Outside, besides maybe some scattered villages in Siberia, or some other bunkers elsewhwere, Russia is now a dead .Burnt. land which so many of us gave our all for, and our ancestors spilt their blood over, wiped out over what? Pride? Imperialism? Or just fucking blind stupidity.

Down in the Atrium the men are practically rioting and I can hear their shouts echo up to my office. After losing over a fifth of our men to suicide last night the rest of us aren't exactly the most content. I guess Anotonv's finally pulled his head from the clouds and seen the mutiny boiling to the surface in the eyes of many of the garrison as the normal patrols have been replaced, either by diehard patriots or Spetnatz. This bunker is already starting to go to hell, even as the world outside is still bathed in the warm embrace of nuclear radiation.


	16. 7th July 2013

7th July 2013

They began to cut back on food today. A 'temporary state of rationing' was the official line, but I think we all know what's really happening. This base is beginning to starve. Not immediately but, in about a month, two months if we're lucky, our food supplies are going to run out.

It seemed like it would last forever, back when it came to us on the train, like a never ending cornucopia of rations. Water's going to be a problem soon aswell. In about three months those tanks are going to be drying up, and unless we want to poison ourselves with radiation then we can't get any more from outside the bunker. Nobody knows about it yet except me, Antonov and a few of the other senior officers, and it's not something we're going to want to spread. The men are on edge enough and, if what Anotonv's whispering to some of his aides in quiet corners, we have bigger problems at the moment.

It would have been nothing, just a minor scuffle to be forgotten about, that is, until the body turned up. Spread-eagled in a dimly lit maintenance tunnel, the man had only been dead a few hours when the patrols found him. He was a nobody, one of the low rank privates that the officers treated like shit, but the incident he was involved in earlier today, and the horrific state of the corpse, suddenly made this a whole lot more serious.

What began as a minor disagreement over a bottle of whisky earlier today between the victim and a Spetnatz soldier had been written off by most of us as just two men getting pissed over nothing, but when I heard about that body I felt my blood chill. The soldier had not just been stabbed; he had been practically torn apart. His corpse was covered in gaping knife wounds, the sort only a madman, or a highly trained killer would inflict, and with the size of blade only Spetnatz men carried.

I know Antonov was quite dismissive of it, saying it was just a particularly gruesome suicide in his evening message, delivered at a mass roll call of the entire base, with the Spetnatz in full attendance as well, and standing slightly further away from the rest of the garrison than normal.

He was pretty convincing, I'll give him that, but he didn't convince me. I don't know what it was, the way he hammered his fist into the wooden lectern a bit too much, how his movements seemed a bit forced or maybe the fact his eyes darted to the Spetnatz commander when talking about watching for 'traitors in our midst'. All I know is that, when he told us of the corpse's condition, I swear one of the special force's men smirked a little, and his hand went to the knife at his belt.


	17. 8th July 2013

8th July 2013

There's still life in the world outside. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't witnessed it myself. Most of us had resigned to the fact that everything and everyone- friends, loved ones, the whole world- is just gone, wiped out…

But then, whilst visiting some of the communications officers down in the radio room today, that's when I heard it. A voice, a human voice, on the other end of an open radio link to some forgotten payphone in a Metro station. We figured it was the best bet; after all, it's the biggest fallout shelter in Moscow, if conspiracy theorists and the like are to be believed.

It seemed like nothing at the time, just a burst of static but then there came one frantic message, which I scrawled down in an instant, not wanting to lose what could be our last ever message from outside.

"Hello, hello, anybody out there? This is Foreman Shiltokovsky of the…fuck does it really matter anymore…I'm an engineer but, it, it doesn't matter people are starving here! We need help! Are you, are you even…"

That's when the broadcast shut down and everybody in that room, technicians, radiomen, soldiers, all paused and just stared at that radio set, stared, like it was going to explode or spontaneously combust.

That's when there seemed to be some silent unspoken agreement in that room, that, whatever shit went down in this bunker, there was still life out there, and that Antonov and the Spetnatz could never be told that fact, or else we might all end up on the wrong side of a firing squad.


	18. 9th July 2013

9th July 2013

Things are getting bad in here. Some dumb fuck tried to escape this morning, just ran at the Spetnatz guards at the main gate, got himself torn to pieces by high calibre rounds in seconds. Nobody could have got past those monsters alive, don't think he expected to get past anyway. Probably suicidal I guess, he must have known he had no chance. And, far as we can gather from the boasts the guards made, the stupid bastard was actually smiling, laughing almost, as they shot him to pieces with automatic rifles.

That's only a footnote though to the real craziness I saw today, down in the mess hall around twelve in the afternoon. I was getting my daily plate of stale rations, beef I think it was once, and that's when things got a mental.

The whole affair started with something completely trivial, some Spetnatz commandos shoving past a skinny private and knocking him into the wall. Anybody else and they would have just ignored it, but this little thug seemed to not want to let it lie, and rounded on the two commandos.

"Think you're the fucking grade-A shit don't you, fascist dog?" he snarled, and, seeing a few nods of agreement from the crowd starting to form pressed his attack again, stepping toward them.

He looked so weak and puny standing next to those two, but he was either brave or stupid as, with the crowd starting to egg him on, he glanced around, smiled confidently ,then spat in the Spetnatz soldier's face.

I knew, even before the stupid little shit stepped toward them, that he wasn't walking away from this encounter. He would be crawling. The commando's fist was a blur as it smashed into the soldier's face, the crack of his nose like a gunshot, silencing the jeers of the crowd. His arm was next, splintering from a knee to the forearm and, as the skinny soldier howled in pain and doubled over, a fist to the back slammed him to the floor.

For a few tense seconds there was complete silence, except for the whines of the soldier on the floor, and the heavy breathing of the Spetnatz man standing over him.

I don't know what was said or why it was so fast, I was still over by the service counter, but, before those commandos could walk away, the crowd, at least forty soldiers and technicians, suddenly rushed them, beating them down, practically trampling the screaming form of the private on the floor.

The commandos, who had always exuded power and strength, were just swept away, one lost under the wave of blows, the other trying to run toward the doors before he was dragged to the ground and set upon, the mob hitting him with chairs, table legs and metal trays.

And, as I stood there I felt my hand go to the pistol at my belt and I thanked God that Antonov had ordered all standard personnel to hand in any service weapons and side arms this morning if not needed for patrol duties.

But, with the two commandos motionless on the concrete floor, and no other targets in sight, the mob started to advance slowly on me, evidently seeing me as a symbol of the oppressive forces that now controlled their entire lives. And that's when my right hand curled around the revolver's cold steel handle, and I began to go through the old exercises drilled into me at training camp twenty years ago, checking which target to go for first, before the gang were going to tear me apart like they did to the two commandos.

The moment never came as a chair was hurled into the kitchens beyond, the startled kitchen staff running for cover. The leader of the mob, a burly corporal clutching a bloody table leg was bellowing.

"Why do you fascists keep us trapped in this hellhole? Why can we not make our own way! Russia is dead! The motherland is…!"

He never finished his speech. A bullet exploded from his forehead and the roar of a sniper rifle filled the cavernous room.

The rest of the mob were slow to react as gas canisters fell among them and the clatter of dozens of booted feet filled the air at the same time as the grey, acrid smoke spread its tendrils out.

The Spetnatz reinforcements were brutal and methodical, decked out in full riot gear and shields along with heavy batons and, slightly out of place for a riot squad, a few carried short barrelled shotguns. They charged the terrified rioters, savagely beating them into submission with cold steel and heavy shields as I tried to make myself as small as possible.

I saw the Spetnatz commander, a gas mask covering his face, pounding the butt of his Dragonuv sniper rifle into a screaming technician, blood spitting up onto one of his mask lenses. He glanced at me for a second, and I swear he gave me a sly wink before he stepped over his whimpering victim.

The commander was swept from view as I was hurled into the wall by a hulking commando, his mask right in my face, screaming at me to stay on the ground, before he casually noticed my officers uniform and, with nothing more than a nod, grabbed me by my shoulder and escorted me from the room as other Spetnatz men rushed past, a few coldly hefting assault rifles as they ran into the smoky mess hall.

"Stay here." He threw over his shoulder as he ran back into the riot, actually scratch that, very one sided fight, and was lost in the tear gas which still caused my eyes to water.

I picked myself up and staggered away, hoping those muffled bangs from behind were just more chairs being thrown.


	19. 10th July 2013

10th July 2013

The mess hall riot was big news this morning, everybody trying to come to terms with what the hell had happened yesterday afternoon. There were rumours everywhere, conspiracy theories and whispers in dark corners flying around. For a lot of the conspiracy nuts, two major questions were being , how were the Spetnatz so quick to react? The current estimates for the commandos response time runs in the minutes, even though from personal experience I know it's at least a five minute sprint to the mess hall from the Spetnatz main base on the east side, not counting the time taken to arm and mobilise themselves, or the heavy gear and weapons they were packing. That just doesn't add up.

And then, a much more pressing question, what happened to the rioters? A few are dead, like the sergeant who had his brains blown out when the special forces stormed the place, but the rest? When a squad went in to clean the place up all they found were blood patches and a few bullet casings, and there must have been about fifty people alive when the riot was put down.

In less pressing news, communicatiosn with the scientists near the reactor was lost today. Probably an electrical fault or something; not surprised in the least either, that reactors as efficient as our diplomats were at stopping the apocalypse. All I know is that their sending an engineering team down there get those scientists to sort their shit out.

I mean, whatever the fuck they're doing down there, it can't be worse than what's happening up here.


	20. 11th July 2013

11th July 2013

Well, I found out this morning where the prisoners from the riot have gone. They've been released. Yeah, that's it; Antonov went and released them, all of them, in the Atrium today in front of everyone.

Released, with a rope around their necks off a catwalk a hundred metres above our heads. All forty of them, beaten, bloody and bruised, shoved to their deaths by grim faced Spetnatz. As they fell the main FSB agent was standing on a podium, surrounded by a wall of Spetnatz in riot gear, calmly reading out from a scrap of file paper as the snapping of necks and cries of horror almost drowned his words out.

"These men before you have been charged tried and punished for their crimes of treason towards the Russian state which is, and forever will be, alive and strong, no matter how many bombs, missiles and hatred is thrown our way by the West! These cowards have gone the same way as those who selfishly took their own lives on the day we wiped the fascist West off the planet, and so will any others who dare oppose Russia! Long live the Fatherland! Land of the free!"

And, as the FSB agent started off a rousing rendition of the national anthem, everyone around me began to sing, quietly at first, still In shock at what had just happened, but when the Spetnatz on the catwalks above stared down at us, a few down the scopes of their rifles, everyone joined in, a great roar of forced patriotism at a country long dead.

As for other events in this concrete hell, the team they sent down to the reactor level yesterday to sort out those scientists, well, that's another story.

Not a word for the last twelve hours. It's like they were just I don't know, swallowed up by the lower levels. Complete nonsense of course. As are all the rumours flying around about weird noises in the ventilation systems and drifting up through the elevator shafts down to the reactor level.

Just ghost stories and nonsense, every last bit of it. Those men are probably just sitting down there, laughing at the rampant fascism starting to creep into this place from every corner.


	21. 12th July 2013

12th July 2013

'Antonov must die'. That was the graffiti me and Vlasov found on the way to my office, daubed in five foot high letters across the floor of the Atrium in red paint, the brush strokes jagged, as if they had been carved into the concrete.

"Shit, somebody's going to take the leap of faith for this." Vlasov muttered angrily, glancing for a second at the now empty nooses hanging from the catwalks above.

"Can't blame whoever wrote it…" I whispered softly, checking to make sure nobody was listening, but we were alone, most personnel already at their posts or stuck doing endless drills down in the barracks. "Yesterday was just barbaric."

But Vlasov only shrugged.

"Just keep your head down sir, that's all I can say."

As we walked away, I remembered a quote from some historic politician that seemed to perfectly sum up our current situation.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

The rest of the day I was filling out endless reams of paperwork-even the apocalypse couldn't stop that- mostly more weapons and ammunition for the Spetnatz guarding the exits, but, as I finished an order for more canned meats to the main food store, one item request caught my eye. It was sent from maintencace, needing something to clear some blockages that had emerged in the ventilation systems over the last few days. It couldn't be anything from outside of course, the whole bunkers completely sealed off from the nuclear wasteland out there.

It's probably just some crap from the septic tanks or waste disposal, far as I can tell. Although what sort of waste is luminescent green and transparent? And why the fuck do they need flamethrowers to clear it?


	22. 13th July 2013

13th June 2013

Nothing much to report today really. The Spetnatz are still demanding a ridiculous amount of equipment from us, today it was almost a tonne of sandbags and ten RPG-7 rocket launchers for the little fortress they seem to be constructing over in the old entrance hall we stepped into over a month ago. Why do they need all this crap? Do they know something we don't? Is there some hell spawned mutant monstrosity ready to break down the blast doors and devour us all?

Total bullshit.

On another note though, that repair team still hasn't returned from the reactor level, and there's been intermittent blackouts for the past few hours. Seriously, those scientists and the reactor control staff really need to get their act together before Antonov sends some Spetnatz down to sort them out.

**A/N**

**Just a quick note for anybody who's read this far into the story. Just wanting a bit of feedback on what everybody thinks of the whole story so far, any improvements I can make and where you think the plot should go. You don't have to but this would just help me finalise my ideas for the rest of it, and the eventual ending.**

**Thanks!**


	23. 14th July 2013

14th July 2013

Today was the day that we finally learnt what happened down in the reactor level, and when things down here just took another sinister plunge into madness.

It all started early this morning, out on patrol with five others down in the lower levels. Since the supposed disappearance of that maintenance crew, and some secret talks with the FSB agents, if the rumours are true, Antonov has been stepping up security in the lower part of the bunker tenfold, with half the base in full kit patrolling every inch of the place, the other half on constant combat readiness, overseen by our benevolent overlords the Spetnatz and the FSB.

We were just passing one of the staircases down to the reactor level when things just went crazy. With a crash and clatter of metal, the door from the staricase was thrown open and a man came sprinting out, screaming at the top of his lungs, covered in blood, his uniform ragged and torn.

Before he had even taken a step towards us one of the men let off a panicked shot, which hit its screaming victim in the chest and he instantly crumpled to the floor, howling in agony. I rounded on the man within a heartbeat as the rest of the squad went to check the man's wounds.

"What the fuck were you thinking?!" I roared" I know things have gone to shit down here but you can't shoot a man just because you pissed yourself at a loud noise! Now get on the radio and get a medical team down here. Now!"

The soldier, sweating and red faced, quickly got out his radio and I turned back to the new arrival.

"Who is he?"

"Don't know sir…" came the reply "Although judging by his…"

The private was cut off as the man on the ground suddenly sat up and vomited up a wad of green bile which splashed entirely over the three men crouched by him.

Taking no notice of our cries of disgust and horror, he grabbed at my leg and started babbling.

"My God, shut it down! Burn it all! The glow…It blinds me!"

And with that he passed out in a pool of his own blood and vomit.

The medics were there soon after that, loading him onto a stretcher and off to the medical centre, where Doctor Talos already had his work cut out trying to stop half his patients blowing their brains out over his clinic. I sent the other men with him, still caked in green vomit.

It might just be my imagination, or me going insane from the hell we've all witnessed, but, as the men shambled off after the medical team, I swear I saw some of the green bile on the back of the last man begin to pulsate ,slowly and unnaturally.


	24. 15th July 2013

15th July 2013

What the fuck was that insane wreck from the reactor level carrying? The man died soon after he reached the medical centre, but the men he vomited on are still going, although puking up green shit every few minutes. Whatever it is, it's starting to spread. I've seen men coughing loudly and running to the bathrooms, down near the medical centre, and it's the first time those hazmat suits in the storerooms have been out, although only on standby. For now of course.

I'm trying to keep my distance from the medical area for now, and, from my lofty perch on the command level, you can see men on the lower balconies leaning over to vomit into the depths below.

Antonov's been going crazy for the whole morning, roaring at Talos for failing to get this messed up disease under control. It was just Talos' responsibility at first, at least, until Antonov called an urgent meeting of the main officers.

We were all gathered in the command centre, Antonov, red faced and fuming, Talos pale faced next to him, me and Delov almost in agreement for once, mainly that this whole affair was insane, and a gaggle of other wide eyed officers. Even the Spetnatz commander was there, although he was grinning from ear to ear. Current rumours are that he ordered the execution of the rioters a few days back, and even Antonov was slightly taken aback at the brutality of it.

But, if he was fazed by that, Antonov hadn't shown it, and his voice as he began was calm and even.

"Gentlemen." He began, looking at each one of us in turn as he spoke. "We have a situation. Actually, fuck that, things are going mental. This disease must be stopped, and I don't care how it's done but this bunker, this unit, will survive. I don't care what it takes, but we have to put behind us the old world of 'morality' and 'freedom' before we find ourselves blowing our brains out like the little cowards did when the bombs fell…"

He paused, letting his words sink in for a second, before snapping at us, in a more commanding tone.

"This place will not degenerate. We will not become animals. I will have order. And any man who opposes that will be…removed. With ruthless efficiency and no mercy. Do I have your support?"

There was a murmur of approval from the group. Antonov spoke again, but his words now were cold and without any emotion except a burning anger just below the surface.

"I said, do I have your support?"

This time every man present answered loudly ,each snapping off a firm salute and voicing their undying support. I did aswell, and maybe I will regret that in the future, but Antonov was very softly tapping his finger on the handle of his Makarov pistol, so I figured it was a good cause pretty quickly as he snapped at Talos.

"Doctor Talos, what is this disease? I think our friends here need to know what we are dealing with."

The small man nodded, cleared his throat and, in a slightly trembling voice, began to speak. His next words however, shocked us all.

"This isn't a natural disease."

There was an almost comical silence in the room, but the deadly seriousness of the situation soon hit us as the man continued to speak.

"This…disease, appears to be an example of a Class A germ warfare weapon, which evidently the scientists on the reactor level are…were, working on. As far as I can tell ,it is highly infectious and, at the current rate ,every person at this facility could be infected within two days."

He let that statement hang for a second, and was about to speak again when Antonov interrupted.

"That's it. I want a full quarantine. Delov, have the medical centre sealed off. Captain Leden, take a platoon down to the reactor level and cleanse that place. Full hazmat and flamethrowers for each man. Go."

The two men sprinted from the room, panicked expressions on their faces, and the rest of us all prepared for our own tasks.

"Talos, set up a new medical centre in one of the main storerooms, anything you need, get it, I don't care how."

Talos nervously ran from the room, scribbling on a scrap of paper as he disappeared down the corridor. Antonov by now was in his element, turning to the Spetnatz commander and snapping coldly.

"Take a unit down to the medical centre before it's locked down and cleanse it. With extreme prejudice."

The commander's only response was a knowing smile as he marched away, and Antonov turned to the rest of us.

"As for all of you, I want this place to survive. Get as many men as you can find and sweep this shithole from top to bottom. Kill any infected you find and burn the bodies. Any of you fail to carry this out, well, the leap of faith awaits you…"

We were all about to leave the room when the main FSB agent appeared, pale faced and coughing into his hand.

"Sorry I'm late" he slurred, his words seeming forced and unnatural. "Some fucker vomited on me back there. Don't worry yourself though, he won't be…doing it any time soon…"

He stopped when he realised we were all looking in terror at him, and the luminescent green mucus pooling in his hand. For a second there was a tense silence as we stepped back, and his eyes widened in horror.

And yet, when a gunshot pierced the air and he fell, a bullet between his eyes, we all jumped, turning to see Antonv, smoking Makarov in hand.

"As I said" He repeated. "No mercy."


	25. 16 July 2013

16th July 2013

The quarantine has been in place now for over twelve hours, and it seems the disease, or weapon, or whatever it is, had been stopped in its tracks. With patrols constantly sweeping the base for any sign of the mysterious plague, and the whole medical centre sealed behind three foot of solid steel blast doors, it seemed like the whole affair couldn't get any worse, and ,in a weird way, things seemed to be going better. The sight of Captain Leden's heavily armed platoon marching down to the reactor level seemed to have put everyone's minds at rest. Everybody now thinks things are going well, that the dark times are over.

How wrong they are.

It was late in the evening when I finally discovered the nightmares that are still threatening our fragile existence in this place. It had seemed pretty innocent when I walked down to the main laboratory, a small area of the base that hasn't been used for anything more than storage since we got here. I just assumed that we were having our officer's meeting here because it was a bit more private. I was wrong.

Antonov was already there with Talos, standing in front of a glass walled isolation chamber, currently shrouded in thick steel shutters. As we all filed in, Captain Leden's absence still not strange, ten hours since he went down to the reactor level, Antonov was the first to speak.

"Ah, so glad you could all join us down here." He said with mock politeness "First I have to congratulate you on your efforts in keeping this vile plague out of our bunker. However, your efforts were not entirely successful."

As he said this a collective stab of fear hit every officer assembled, except the Spetnatz commander, who merely grinned.

"Of course it's nothing serious." Antonov added. "But we have managed to isolate a particularly advanced case of this plague, and this is what I would like to present to you now."

As he said this steel shutters slid up, and we saw a soldier lying on a slab in the centre, deathly pale, his coughs muffled by the soundproof glass.

"This is Private Zeitokovsky, and he generously volunteered to be our little test subject. Now, you have come here at a critical point in the virus' evolution, the final product…so to speak."

At that point we all watched, in horror, as the man started to cough even more, vomiting everywhere, the green slime we had all come to hate splashing across the spotless white room. And then, his silent howls putting chills down my spine, it suddenly all stopped.

In the strange clam, Antonov spoke into a radio mounted on the wall.

"Ok, good so far. Now put the sound from the chamber onto the speakers. I want to hear everything" he added coldly.

The crackle of the speakers coming online almost made me shit myself, but I still watched, in horrified curiosity, the, what I can only describe as nightmarish, process.

As we all watched, a horrifying and sickening squelching sound filled the air, and the man's body began to…

I don't know how to describe it. Don't even know why I'm writing this shit down and not vomiting all over this diary like I should be.

He just, expanded and mutated, all sound played over the speakers, the crack of bone the… no I'm not writing that part down.

He just…dissolved…into this mass of flesh, and then the real horror began.

"This is the final stage of the virus, the 'amoeba' or 'biomass' stage." Antonov said slowly, ignoring the sounds of everyone in the room vomiting over the floor in disgust, and he only walked up to the glass and peered at the gently pulsating mass that had once been a man in quiet reflection, like a person studies a piece of art.

That's when it jumped.

It smacked straight into the reinforced glass, and even the mighty Antonov was scared now, as a fleshy mouth on the underside began opening and closing, the whole mass stretched out like a fucking starfish

Then the crack of glass filled the air.

That's when all hell broke loose. All I remember is everybody running from the room in a stampede, Antonov fucking screaming in anger and fear, Makarov pointed straight at that…thing, on the glass. Then two men in hazmat suits ran into the isolation chamber, AK's in hand, and fired at the thing, the bullets smacking into its back like pebbles in water. The Spetnatz commander was just howling, firing his AK 2012 on full auto at it even as the steel shutters rolled down with a clatter.

But it could still be heard on the other side slamming against the shutters, and Antonov staggered to a large red button on the wall. I was at the door when he pressed it, and there was the roar of flame and screaming from the chamber as I ran from the room and passed out in the corridor.

**Authors note**

**I know what you're thinking, pretty dark and unfortunately very graphic, but, if this is anything to go by, things can only get worse... As always, feel free to review and comment and the next instalment will be up tomorrow.**


	26. 17th July 2013

17th July 2013

'Battle not with monsters lest you become a monster'

Those words sprang into my mind today, a relic of my distant attempts at a university education ended with a silent drop out, to the shame of my parents, and enlisting in the army to get as far away from said parents as possible. Or maybe Katerina said it sometime; she always was the intellectual type…

But I digress. Today was the day Anotonv's new regime began, and when that quote really came into play. After the horrors of yesterday's little lab accident, we've had squads of soldiers in biohazard gear running around the base with flamethrowers and heavy automatic weaponry, hunting down and destroying the last of the infected still in the bunker.

And it was today that yet another of Anotonv's addresses turned into a bloodbath. After the mass hanging of the rioters, everyone here has been scared at any announcements or mass assemblies of base personnel, and todays proved to be no different. This time however, it was looters getting their due. There were five of them, standing alone at the edge of the main Atrium platform, shivering and sweating from cold, naked fear. Their crime seemed meaningless to most of us, two of them had taken a frozen bag of MRE rations from a storeroom, and the other three had covered it up before they were all caught.

For that crime they now stood before all six hundred other personnel, so many obvious absences in our unit, and even amongst the Spetnatz. As Antonov described their offence to us, calling it a 'crime against the motherland' and a 'betrayal of the worst kind', ten soldiers, all hardcode patriots and Antonov supporters, stood to and aimed their weapons at the captives.

As we all watched, in unison they chanted 'For the Motherland!' and calmly gunned the men down in a blaze of automatic gunfire, reloaded, then shot the corpses again. It was all over in ten seconds, and Antonov began to speak once more, silencing us all from any screams of outrage we may have been about to say.

"And so anyone, anyone, who defies us, will share these men's fates. My word is law! You are all mine, and anyone who says otherwise will be destroyed!"

His expression was one of anger as he finished and, for a few seconds there was silence. And, in that time, the officer next to me, standing on the front row, frowned slightly, and was about to speak.

He never got the chance.

One second he was next to me, and the next there was a deafening bang, and he was on the floor, unmoving, blood seeping from his head and over the dull concrete. Above us, at his lectern, Antonov waved his smoking Makarov at the crowd as he roared.

"As I said, anyone who says otherwise will be destroyed! Now, to your posts!"

The crowd quickly dispersed, and I found myself glancing for a second at the corpse of the officer. If all it took to earn death in this place was the wrong word, what chance did any of us have?

The murders of the morning address, however, are nothing to what horrors we witnessed this afternoon, in the command room at our daily briefing. As me and the other officers filed in, we all expected some mention to be made of the nightmare in the laboratory, but Antonov remained silent as we came in, instead standing to the side of a rat faced little man I recognised as the chief technician for the electronics around the base.

Waiting for us all to take our places standing before him, the little man cleared his throat and launched straight in.

"Gentlemen, earlier today I managed to get the security cameras for the reactor level back online. I believe many of you will be….interested to know our findings."

This time there was no intake of breath or dramatic pause. Instead there was nothing but a stunned silence as the main screen came online, displaying a burst of static.

"We only managed to get a few minutes of video, but the images are…" and he visibly shivered as he added. "Disturbing…"

We all watched the static for a few seconds, and then, as the image started to appear, my eyes widened, and I felt my throat go dry.

The grainy image displayed a vast…mass of grey, which, as the video began to focus, its true horror was revealed. What I assumed to be some distortion on the video was anything but. As we all watched, I came to one shocking conclusion.

It was alive.

The blob was moving, pulsating and growing around the thick pillars of the nuclear reactor, countless orifices, from tiny sucker like protrusions to huge openings which looked like they could swallow a man, and each one was slowly opening and closing, as the thing heaved and pulsated.

"Can you zoom in?" Came the calm voice of Antonov, who we had almost forgotten was there, so transfixed was the whole group on the horror before us.

The technician complied and the beast filled the whole screen, I realised what those small protrusions and lumps actually were.

They were human faces.

Each one seemed to be silently howling at their fate, and I found myself recognising them as the scientists we had seen so many weeks ago. They had created this monster, and now they were suffering for eternity for it. And it seemed that soon we would too.

"Fuck, is that what I think it is?!" came the anguished cry from Delov nearby, the others in the room just struck dumb by what they were seeing. Instantly I looked to where on the screen he was pointing, and I found bile rising in my throat. It was a ragged scrap of uniform, floating on the fleshy mass like driftwood, the five stars of a captain just visible.

"So that's why Leden never came back…" I remember whispering softly; ignoring the orders being snapped around me, talk of preparing defences in the lower levels, and of this thing soon being powerful enough to attack us in the main bunker.

All I remember of the rest of that meeting was the rest of that quote from earlier.

"And if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you…"


	27. 18th July 2013

18th July 2013

Even the apocalypse couldn't stop us killing each other, it seems, but this time our very existence in this place was under threat.

I was assigned, along with what felt like half the soldiers in the base, to guard the main corridor near where the elevators down to the reactor level are. Along with me was Dakker, lugging some heavy communications equipment, and Vasily, nervously checking his AK as we took up positions. Officially my role was to provide ammunition and spare weapons to anyone who needed them, like a glorified powder monkey or something, but, unofficially, I think it was just a good idea to have a few extra guns firing at whatever came up those stairs.

We were just walking down the defensive line of sandbags and concrete cinder blocks, hastily cobbled together last night, handing out spare magazines, cigarettes, and bottles of vodka, just anything to try and put these terrified men's minds at ease, when we heard it.

It was a horrific, roaring, howling sound, a tortured, deep throated bellow that echoed around us, and everyone's face paled and a few men vomited in complete and utter fear. I'm sure one of the soldier's near me wet himself. That's when we knew…it was coming.

And for two agonisingly long minutes, there was nothing for us to hear except that incessant roaring, getting slowly louder. One man ran back, dropping his weapon and printing away. But he had barely made it a few steps before the sergeant next to him sighed, a look of deepest regret on his face, drew his pistol, and shot the man dead.

By then however, a new noise started to drift towards the flimsy looking defences we crouched behind. It was a squelching sucking sound, like boots sloshing through thick mud, but it only made my blood run cold.

Then, with another howling roar, the biomass appeared.

It was a huge...mass of pink and grey flesh, forcing its way forward with a sickly squelching sound, the smell of decay and flesh blasting straight at us, causing many men to gag and vomit. As I watched it, I realised this thing didn't seem to end, carrying on down and blocking the rest of the corridor from sight, a long unbroken snake of mutated flesh stretching all the way down to the reactor far below.

"Take aim!" screamed a nearby corporal, and the rest of the men needed no further orders as they fired.

For a second I was deafened by the roar of gunfire, and then there was a loud clicking and soldiers around me cursing as they frantically reloaded. I raised my own gun, an AK 2012 I picked out a few hours earlier, thinking I would never have to use the strange looking gun.

But, as the thing slithered closer, snakelike tentacles and tendrils probing the floor in front of it as the faces in its skin howled and screamed. Once again it was hit by volleys of bullets, but just kept coming, barely noticing what we threw at it. I fired, for four seconds on full automatic, hoping to at least slow the thing down. It did nothing, and I cast aside the useless weapon, and shouted over at vasily as my ears rang from the gunfire around.

"Get the RPG!"

Vasily nodded, letting off one more burst from his AK before grabbing the heavy weapon and handing it to me, a hopeful look on his face that maybe this might slow down the hellish monster before us.

Ramming a rocket into the front I lifted the heavy barrel to my shoulder, aiming it straight at one of the tortured faces in the thing, which was now lit up in blazes of orange and yellow as a jet of flame from further down the line struck it to no effect. With a grim frown on my face, I took a breath, and then fired.

For a second time seemed to slow down, and I watched the rocket fly down the dimly lit tunnel, a curved plume of smoke behind it as it finally struck the beast full on, blasting a deep crater in it. With a howl the biomass lurched forward again, one of its tentacles whipping dangerously close to our line.

"Reload! Reload!" I remember screaming at Vasily, who tossed me another rocket, then dove into the piles of ammunition for more of the explosives.

The next shot had the same effect, showering the grey concrete either side of the thing with red and green splashes. But still it came, and now its tentacles were in range.

The man next to me was the first to go down, the vine like tendril snapping his neck in one blow, the dead man's finger still on the trigger as the gun fired crazily up into the ceiling, showering us all with chips of concrete.

Another tentacle snapped out at us, grabbing a screaming soldier by the waist and crushing him.

"Cut it!" screamed a captain further back, and immediately two burly corporals ran forward, drawing curved machetes, which I had discovered a crate of only a few days ago, and hacked at the fleshy arm, which was soon cut to pieces, spreading foul oozing black blood everywhere.

I shut out all the terrors around me, taking aim with the RPG, but I found it torn from my grip by one of the storm of green coils, and I watched in horror as it was snapped like a twig, and I came to a shuddering realisation.

It could think.

All around me we were losing, men torn to pieces by the fleshy whip like tentacles, others just giving up and shooting themselves as their friends died around them. A blast of flame engulfed a group of men as a flamethrower exploded in a roar of fire and smoke, it's unfortunate user nothing more than a charred skeleton.

"Fall back!" I yelled, drawing my revolver and mercy killing a man being dragged toward the biomass by his leg. It was better to die than be absorbed into that monstrosity, and if we didn't retreat we would all soon be joining the screaming choir on the thing's body.

I just ran after that, ignoring the howl of terror around me, a few others racing after, firing a few shots behind them. The last thing I remember before I passed out in a pool of my own vomit was the heavy blast doors behind us close, and the screams of the men still on the other side, hammering feebly at the thick steel before it all went quiet.


	28. 19th July 2013

(Music- 'Fear the Future')

19th July 2013

"Unacceptable…" Antonov was saying as he paced along the line of officers at the morning briefing, all of us shitting ourselves silently as he repeated himself.

"As I said, unacceptable…"

He took a deep breath, before his calm façade suddenly dropped and he had drawn his Makarov, waving it in each man's face as he roared.

"You let he line drop you dozy fuckers! I gave you all you needed, weapons, ammo, information, and what do you do?! You let that…blob, take out a strategic point, and lost me twenty good men! How do you expect me to not deal out some punishment? Alright, we start now. Who was in charge of the defence line?"

A portly captain near the end of the line began to raise his hand nervously, and was dead before he could say a word in his defence.

"Now…" Antonov began, absently running a finger along the barrel of his smoking pistol. "Who ordered the retreat?"

I began to raise my hand, and Antonov was staring into my face, and, before I could say anything, he absently patted me on the shoulder.

"A sound decision Videnski. Without your quick thinking we wouldn't have any men left…"

I felt a wave of relief in me, that maybe there was a shred of a soul in Antonov's psychopathic mind. That thought died as he shot the officer next to me in the face.

He stood in front of us once more, calmly slamming another magazine into his pistol.

"Now, I believe that we still have unfinished business down in the reactor level. Commander Miller, I want you to assemble a force and cleanse that hell."

It took me a second to realise that he was talking to the Spetnatz commander, who had just swaggered into the command centre with three heavily armed commando's at his side. But it was the commander's next words that would come as the biggest shock.

"No."

Every man in the room winced at that word, a few covering their ears at the almost certain bark of Antonov's Makarov.

"What?" Antonov said finally, and instantly his pistol was up and pointed at the commander's face.

Commander Miller smiled calmly, and drew his own weapon, a heavy MP-412 revolver, its long barrel an inch away from Anotonv's right eye as said, without even blinking at the gun in his face.

"Yes Quartermaster." He laughed, nodding at me in an eerily friendly manner. "You're not the only one who has a revolver, but I've got the balls to actually use mine."

"This is mutiny Miller." Antonov hissed.

"Yes it is indeed, Antonov, and I don't think there's anything you can do about it .You may be surprised at this, but frankly, you've had it coming for a while. Maybe you might prefer my younger brother, he's a stubborn little shit, but maybe a bit more principled than me, a bit less likely to see the facts in this place. Unfortunately for you, last time I heard from him, he was deployed at the Moscow State Library. Hopefully he's dead in the rubble by now... And, unlike my poor, principled little bother, I now intend to attain victory, victory against the thing in the basement and against your little hellhole…"

His eyes were cold and murderous as, in less than a second, he turned his gun away from Antonov, shot dead one of the officer's in the line still staring in horror at the exchange happening in front of them, then transferred his aim back to Antonov, all before the lieutenant colonel could even blink.

"You see, I'm almost as good at shooting your officers as you are…"

As they continued to talk, and with nobody looking in my direction, I eased the revolver in my holster out and into my hand, hoping nobody had noticed, but they were all glued to the current confrontation.

"If you want me and my men…" Commander Miller was saying "We will be down by the main entrance, keeping to our orders. Making sure not one little fuck gets out of this bunker alive…"

That's when I saw my chance and raised my revolver, firing one shot, which hit the nearest Spetnatz soldier clean in the forehead, the soldier falling to the ground in a heap.

For a second, there was silence, as Miller aimed his revolver at me.

"Well, looks like someone grew a…"

Before he could say any more, Antonov had rammed his Makarov down the brute's throat.

"This is what happens to those who fuck with me." He hissed, and then pulled the trigger.

Before the commander had hit the floor, the two other commandoes were held at gunpoint by the rest of the officers, both of whom spat at Antonov as he stepped over to them.

"Now…" He said calmly, wiping blood off the end of his pistol.

I watched the two Spetnatz men, one glancing at the door then nodding at his comrade, who reached into his pocket and pulled out a large bladed knife from his webbing, offering it handle first to Antonov.

"If you're going to kill me pig." He spat "Do it with my own blade."

It took me a split second to realise what he was holding, a Spetnatz NRS 2 shooting knife, and I quickly tackled Antonov and pulled him to the ground, the bullet launched from the hilt of the knife whistling overhead.

Instantly the Spetnatz man was gunned down and slammed against the far wall in a splash of crimson, but his friend was already out of the door and away, a few officers making to run after him.

"Stop." Antonov commanded, roughly pushing me off him and standing up. "Let him run. I have a little surprise for the rest of those traitors."

Turning to me, still lying on the floor, he snapped.

"Videnski, bring me Container V77 from the main storeroom. Now!"

I nodded and ran from the room, the fleeing Spetnatz man already gone, just visible on a higher catwalk running toward the train line to the main entrance across the chasm like gap between the entrance and the Atrium.

Container V77.

My blood literally ran cold at the mention of the thing. To think Antonov was going to use such a weapon showed how desperate things were. The container was filled with over a hundred separate conatienrs, all filled with Novichok agents. Otherwise known, in layman's terms, as something else.

Nerve gas.


	29. 20th July 2013

(Music- 'The Sacred War')

20th July 2013

How long did it take for things to fall apart in this place? A month? A month and a half? Less than that, it seems. It seems like only yesterday that we were all marching into this concrete hell, wide eyed and in awe of the strange beauty of this place. Now we're at war.

Not against the biomass, oh no, that's still confined down in that service corridor, at least I hope. No, we're fighting amongst ourselves. And about what?

All I know is that, this morning, we're marching out to war against the Spetnatz, rousing chants and songs echoeing through the darkness, decked out in body armour and heavy weaponry, and with thick gasmasks over our faces. I was tasked by Antonov to lead a platoon of men on the left flank of our attack against the Spetnatz traitors. Or, to put it more simply, we were shooting at them across the chasm that separates us. It's a strange feeling, not actually seeing your enemy; we were practically blind firing most of the day.

We emerged out into the Atrium and it was transformed. The whole place was bathed in a dark green cloud of gas, settling in some places in a fine grey powder, like ash or virgin snow. The sight filled me with dread, the nerve gas we dragged up to Antonov yesterday had now been released, and everybody in the crowd of soldiers all moving into firing positions was on edge, knowing that, if our masks failed, a grisly death awaited us. It didn't exactly help my nerves when a captain nearby started listing what would happen in a grim monotone, yet he seemed almost in awe of what he might witness when it happened.

"First you know you've been poisoned…" he began with a slight fatalistic snigger. "Your arms and legs go all slack, like you've been on the booze a while. Few seconds later, you might feel a bit short of breath, and then it'll get worse, like someone's shoved something in your mouth and you're choking on it. Finally, and this is the best bit, your heart begins to beat louder, louder and faster, like you're running a marathon. Then, with the thumping in your chest getting louder, your limbs not responding to anything, that's when you fall to the ground, choking, and die on your face, bleeding and coughing up your guts as the gas tears you apart…"

He was cut off as a shot rang out above our heads and the column fell apart as people ran for cover.

"Snipers!" shouted a nearby officer, moments before a bullet hit him in the neck and he fell to the conrete with a howl.

We had only just emerged onto the main floor of the Atrium, the corpses of the hung rioters still watching over us with dead eyes and already we were running for cover. Across the vast gap of blackness between the Atrium and the Spetnatz controlled balconies and walkways near the main entrance hung the greenish cloud of nerve gas. Instantly my hand went to my mask, checking it was still secured to my head, and then the spare filters at my waist. If I ran out a Spetnatz bullet was better than the alternative.

"Suppressing fire! Keep their heads down!" I roared at the panicked men cowering in cover around me. As we crouched there I silently thanked the men Antonov had had build the defences on this side of the chasm. Without them we would be shot to pieces.

By now there was a gun battle raging across the entire Atrium, bullets flying over my head, the crack of assault rifles and chatter of heavy machine guns hammering in my ears. To my right two soldiers were sat with Dragonuv rifles, holding their guns in shaking hands as they fired ,eyes wide behind mask lenses. But the men to my left were all shaking in fear as the Spetnatz continued to pour fire upon our positions, clutching their AK's to their chest like frightened children. I could see that these men needed some sort of encouragement. I never expected what happened next though.

The man next to me, barely a boy,must have been around twenty, his eyes filled with tears, and he turned to me, about to say something when a bullet struck him between the eyes, cracking his gas mask and his blood pooled out onto the concrete. For a second the battle beyond was silenced for me, as I watched the boy fall to the ground, then I noticed the trajectory of the bullet in the soldier's dead face, the angle it had come from.

He had been shot by our own side.

Glancing up to the balconies above us, I noticed soldiers with sniper rifles, aiming downward into us. As another man nearby was executed, the crackle of the bunker address system caused every man not shooting blindly at the Spetnatz on the other side to look up as Anotonv's voice crackled out.

"This is your commander speaking. Any man who fails to fight our traitorous enemies will be considered one of them and dealt with in the appropriate manner. Fight on, soldiers of mother Russia!"

As he finished his orders, the sounds of patriotic music blared out over the speakers, a resounding male choir bellowing out, almost drowning out the roar of gunfire, and Vasily, crouched nearby slamming another magazine into his AK, looked over at me for a second and laughed.

"The Sacred War! Never thought I would hear this shit ever again. Proper Soviet music for once!"

I couldn't share in the man's laughter as I emerged form cover for a second, letting off a burst from my rifle. Across the chasm I could see the armoured forms of the Spetnatz firing at us, and then one of them,a bald headed bear of a man grinning behind his mask, ignoring the fire around him and almost daring us to shoot him, stood on the parapet of their concrete defences and, with a megaphone in hand, started to speak, his voice distorted and echoing over the vast space.

"Subhuman cowards!" He roared. "We, the true descendants of Mother Russia call on you to surrender! We will provide for any true patriots who still know Russia survives! Antonov has abandoned you and we will send you to your deaths if you continue to fight! Your struggle is useless and your deaths…" he paused for a second as an explosion from our side and screams filled the air from a Spetnatz RPG attack. Almost smiling at the sounds of death and the bullets whizzing around him, he continued. "…are in vain. Join us now or be destroyed! You cannot fight the monster that Antonov and the FSB created, nor can you hope to survive against us, the real heroes of this concrete hell!"

As he said this, a resounding cheer came from the Spetnatz ranks, and I saw many men around cowering in fear form what seemed to us an unstoppable force. Then the music from our side blared out even louder,and the soldier seemed to retreat back from the deafening choir. But then he was back, laughing through his loudspeaker and shouting even louder as the music from our side continued to ring out.

"Ah, so Antonov thinks he can have some sort of battle of the bands with us? Well, give him what he wants boys!"

At that moment a resounding clash of heavy metal music was pumped out by speakers on the Spetnatz side, its lyrics angry and hateful fascist shit that just made me want to scream.

As we cowered low,the Spetnatz began to sing along in guttural tones.

"Drive them! Drive them out! True Russians!"

With each repeat of that same line they got louder,ones further back slamming their fists together or on their weapons to create a dull bass tone.

"Drive them! Drive them out! True Russians!"

"Keep it together!" I roared to my men,but they barely heard me.

"Drive them! Drive them out! True Russians!"

And so,with most of our men trying to shut out the noise and shouts, a barrage of RPG rockets struck our positions, as a huge flag was unfurled on the Spetnatz side, a black, white and yellow flag I had seen many times at Ultranationalist rallies on street corners around Moscow, the flag accompanied by the roar of the fascist music growing ever louder and echoeing all around.

That's when the line broke.

"Drive them! Drive them out!" the enemy continued to bellow as they fired upon us even harder.

As one mass, the soldiers on our side just ran, men shoving each other aside in their haste, deaf to the shouts of Antonov over the speaker system, the snipers above us just firing randomly into our ranks. They weren't the only ones though. The Spetnatz continued their assault, bullets slamming into the backs of fleeing soldiers whilst their hateful chants provided a weird accompaniement to the men dying around me.

"Russia for Russians! D6 for Russians!" bellowed the Spetnatz, and I swear I saw the soldier with the megaphone strumming his AK like a fucking air guitar to the music, moments before he coldly put a bullet in the speaker systems on our side.

"Keep at..." I heard an officer yell,a tattered Russian banner in hand as he urged us back like an image from an old Soviet propaganda film before,with a deafeining explosion and splatter of gore,he was lost in an explosion.

"True Russians!" shouted the Spetnatz,and the megaphone soldier remerged, flying proudly the Ultranationalsit banner in both hands as his comrades shot our men to pieces.

I felt myself being grabbed by Vasily and Dakker and hauled into a side corridor branching off from the Atrium, the sounds of gunfire and explosions still hammering at my ears along with the fasicts music.

As Vasily hauled the door shut, another man leapt in, a technician I think, sweat running down his face, clutching his gun to his side and saluting me absently.

"Sir, what do we do now?" he asked, his voice muffled by his gas mask.

I sat on the floor in silence for a second, before answering in a dazed fashion.

"I…I just don't know anymore…"

The man continued, wincing slightly as the sound of fists hammering on the door echoed for a second, before an ear splitting scream seeped through the steel plating and it was silenced.

"It's just…" he stammered "Well, do you remember when we cleared that biomass shit out of the air vents? Well, we didn't manage to check the ones around the main entrance and, well…"

"Get to the fucking point soldier…" Vasily snapped sharply, head in his hands by the door, trying to ignore the sounds of men dying beyond the thick metal.

The technician nodded and said finally.

"I think I saw something green moving on the back of that Spetnatz captain."


	30. 21st July 2013

21st July 2013

It's all silent on the Spetnatz side of the Atrium, as we found this morning. When some fool went to look out at the Spetnatz fortress, he found his head wasn't blown off by a bullet, or a rocket sent hurtling his way, and he quickly ran to tell Antonov. It had all gone strangely quiet since last night, when the sentries reported scattered sounds of small arms fire and muffled explosions during the early hours of the morning.

When me, Antonov, Delov and a few others went out onto one of the upper balconies to look out at the Spetnatz side, I felt a sense of horror at what I saw as I looked through binoculars at the other side.

The huge fascist banner was now ragged and torn, filled with bullet holes and singed at the edges, whilst the defences, the sandbags and barbed wire, machine guns and piles of concrete blocks, were empty and quiet. No soldiers moved amongst them, no snipers watched us through scopes and no insults or jeers were thrown our way. Whatever had happened, it had been quick and ruthlessly efficient.

That's when I saw the biomass. Draped over sandbags and clinging to the edges of the banner, green fluid heaved and pulsated in a gentle rythym, and that's when I realised why there were no corpses. My horror was curbed however, by the clipped tone of Antonov, who was all business, uncaring about the abominations only a hundred metres away from us.

"Delov, why have the lights on the main concourse gone out? I thought you had some engineers working on that?"

Delov nodded dumbly. He hadn't been the same since the battle against the Spetnatz yesterday, all his blunt manner and arrogance replaced by a thougtful but fearful figure, his uniform hanging off his thin form like a shroud.

"I-I'm sorry sir." He stammered in reply. "I'll, ermm, send men to check the main concourse, but the lightings being going haywire since most of the engineers got killed off by the plague. I-I think the…thing in the reactor must be siphoning off power, using it for s-s-sustenance."

Antonov was completely without pity, as usual.

"See to it that we get some portable lights rigged up down there. If the Spetnatz are just faking they're doing a very good job, and I'm not going to be caught out by them again."

I didn't share the man's confidence, as I looked down at the main concourse, currently wrapped in shadow, the corpses hanging above still watching over us, some of them starting to rot slightly, and I was sure I saw something moving down there, in the darkness.

Later, the concourse was still in shadow, and Delov's team had just been sent in to set up the lights. There were about ten soldiers lugging heavy floodlights between them, the torches on their helmets casting a small pool of light, which we watched from above. Escorting them Delov had dispatched six others, four of them carrying flamethrowers for some ridiculous reason, although I doubt anybody cared, considering what was about to happen to them.

They were just about to place the first light down, when suddenly the power came back on for a second, only a brief flicker, but it was enough for them to see it'll round them. The biomass. It was all in patches of flesh around the group, coating the floor like barnacles on a rusted ship, and then things got crazy.

"Burn it! Burn everything!" screamed the leader, a burly sergeant in an ill-fitting uniform, letting off a huge burst from his flamethrower, illuminating the patches of biomass as the light began to fade again, and the others followed suit, dropping the heavy floodlights ,drawing their weapons and firing into the darkness.

"Should we help them?" I said, but Antonov only frowned, saying in reply.

"Let's see how this pans out…"

Any protest from me or Delov was lost as we watched strange green, translucent balls emerge from the biomass, like strange spheres of greenish sludge and begin to roll toward the terrified soldiers..

The soldiers below us had also seen, and frantically shot at them, each one exploding with a slight whine as it was destroyed. But soon there, were too many, and I looked away as I heard a few muffled explosions of gas, and the screams of the men below. As I opened my eyes though, I saw something which made my blood run cold. The biomass was spreading. Last time I saw it, when the floodlights flickered on, it was covering half the floor. Now it was over the entire thing, already slowly consuming the bodies of the fallen engineering team. That had all been in the space of five minutes. How far would it get in an hour? A day?

I was already running by then, away from Antonov with his cold smile, away from the weak form of Delov, and away from the monsters that, despite all our efforts, would soon overtake the bunker.

I only stopped running when I barrelled into my office, where Dakker, Vlasov and Vasily were all standing around, still shaken about the events of yesterday.

"What is it sir? Do we need to shift some…?" Vlasov began, but I was already snapping off my orders, hoping I sounded confident, yet in reality I was shitting myself inside.

"I'm sorry lads, but the biomass is here, in the bunker. The Spetnatz are overrun, Anotonv's going crazy, and within the next twenty four hours this entire place will be covered in that green plague. We need to move now, get to somewhere safer, get some weapons and just go…"

Each man instantly nodded, knowing exactly what needed to be done.

"But sir." Dakker replied thoughtfully. "Where can we go to?"

I felt a smile creeping at the corners of my face as I said the next few words, and I could see the others begin to smile too, see the hope beginning g to grow within them after weeks of horror.

"Why the biggest fallout shelter in the world my friends. A place where we can be safe from the monsters in here, and the radiation above. Yes boys, we're going into the Moscow Metro."


	31. 22nd July 2013

22nd July 2013

We've been in this weapons storage warehouse for the past twelve hours, since I burst into my office and shouted at the others that the base was overrun. We may be the only people in the whole bunker now. Since we ran into this place the huge iron doors have been shut, and remained so. I didn't want to take any more chances. I mean, look what happened last time just one infected person got into a secure perimeter. So now it's just me, Dakker ,Vasily and Vlasov in this massive open area, trapped in here with nothing but what feels like every weapon in the world.

Last night was the worst though. I was on watch , with a huge RPK machine gun in hand, sat on top of a crate of grenades, and all I could hear were the screams. D6 has a way with sound, made it seem like everyone out there was howling in my ear. So many screams. So many people being doomed to oblivion ,or worse. Part of me, the part which scares me, just wishes they would all just shoot themselves, cut their throats or just take off their gasmasks and deny their minds and bodies from the biomass. Less for me and the others to deal with when we get out of this hell.

I was brought away from these sinister thoughts when a hammering came on the door, hands slamming onto the thick metal, desperately, crazily.

This had been happening on and off for a few hours now, and I had ended up just blocking it out. The way I saw it, we could do nothing to help those men outside, and letting them in was only endangering us.

That's when the guy on the other end started shouting something, and ,though muffled by the thick armoured metal, I knew exactly who it was.

Delov.

I saw him on the faded grey monitor by the door controls, waving frantically at the camera, slamming a new magazine into his AK as he looked around widly, then waving once more.

"Alright boys I'm opening the door!" I shouted, and instantly the others were up, Vlasov brandishing his AK, Dakker levelling a Dragonuv rifle and Vasily standing up, bleary eyed as he aimed an RPG. These men were taking no chances. They had seen too much death and madness already.

"Why?" Vlasov said bluntly, his eyes filled with suspicion.

"It's Delov." I replied shortly, but I could already see Vlasov shaking his head, and yet I only sighed, then went to hit the button.

Vasily and Dakker nodded, keeping their weapons trained on the door, but I saw Vlasov's gun aimed at my head, sensing his finger on the trigger.

"Look, he can help us…" I said softly, fist just above the large door release button, but already I could see something in Vlasov's eye, something I had never believed the old soldier would be capable of.

Murder. Cold blooded and pointless. It was the same look I had seen in Anotonv's eye when he put a bullet in that captain a few days ago. The mind-set of a man who had seen too much, and experienced too many horrors, for him to take anymore. That was the moment I let my RPK fall to the floor, and my hand went to the revolver at my hip. Just in case, I told myself, just in case this man really had crossed the line into madness so many other men in this hell had gone past, and now only a few of us still hadn't made the jump to.

"Open the fucking door!" Delov was shouting from the other side, but Vlasov only smirked and kept his gun trained at my head.

"Don't…" he began, his finger curling around the trigger, Vasily and Dakker just looking on, completely impotent. There was nothing they could have done anyway.

"Stay back boys…" I said firmly. "Vlasov's just…"

"Just what, major?" he said with a grin. "A bit under the weather? Or just…"

His grin widened, and I felt all the other sounds in the room disappearing, replaced by just me and Vlasov.

"Crazy…"

Then he fired, but the first burst hit the wall just above my head, sending chips of concrete onto me as I went for my gun, accidentally smacking my hand against the release button.

By the time I had drawn my revolver, Vlasov was gone, disappeared into the maze of crates and racks of weapons.

I turned back to the door, which had risen up by about five metres, and Delov practically fell into the room, face pale.

"Shut the door! Shut the door!" he screamed , but he instantly saw there was a problem.

"What…?" he began, but was cut off by Vasily, who bellowed, gun raised.

"Fuck him sir, we need to get that bastard Vlasov!"

I turned back to the dark maze beyond, and was sure I saw a shadow moving amongst the crates.

"Is there any food or water in here Dakker?" I said calmly, the wiry radioman only giving me a look, his Dragonuv held in shaking hands.

"This isn't the time to…" he began, but then just shook his head solemnly.

I took a breath then ,readying myself for the terrible decision I was about to make.

"We go , hit the door control. Open it fully."

The veteran looked like he was about to protest, but only nodded and went to the controls,keeping low as he did so.

"You really want to open that door even further?" Delov said, panting. "I was in one of the hangars on the far side a few hours ago. You open that door any more, the sound will bring every messed up fuck and biomass shit down on us in a heartbeat."

"I know." I said firmly. "That's why we're going."

"What about…?" Dakker said softly, but by then I was storming out of that dark hell and out.

As we ran across the concrete gangplank, I was sure I saw Vlasov's despairing face, for a second his madness replaced by the man we had once known, horrified at the fate we had now condemned him too as we disappeared into the dark corridors beyond.


	32. 23rd July 2013

23rd July 2013

We saw a lot of messed up shit in the rest of the bunker on our way out. The first thing I remember was the bodies. Or rather, the lack of them.

There was plenty of evidence that people had been here, everything from abandoned weaponry to cracked gas masks and scraps of clothing. Once or twice, as I lead the others on, I saw crimson patches of blood leading into dark corridors and rooms, smeared across the grey concrete and metal of the bunker like strange artwork. There were scorch marks as well, the last vestiges of flamethrowers that had proven useless against the nightmare that besieged us. Once I saw the outline of a man, his arms raised in surrender, blasted against a wall, the charred black shadow of the soldier the only human we had seen for hours.

It must have been an hour since we left the dark storeroom, and its crazed occupant, and we had made so little progress, whilst the heavy kitbags on our backs, filled with ammunition, rations and water bottles, felt even heavier, and I paused for a second, holding up a hand to stop the others.

"Alright I guess we can take a…" I began, turning back to them, the sound of my breath echoing in my ears from the claustrophobic gas mask I still wore.

"Oh God." Was the only response I got as Dakker, his face pale beneath his mask, pointed slowly up.

We all looked to where he was pointing, and for a second I couldn't see anything. Then the greenish smoke beyond cleared, and I felt the blood in my veins turn to ice. Beyond the small walkway we were stood on, a maze of interconnected catwalks and spindly concrete bridges loomed through the gas, their forms softened slightly by the green smoke hugging their forms. But it was the bodies that caught my attention, swinging gently in the gas from long black ropes and wires. Not just one or two, or even a dozen.

There were hundreds.

I'm not some sort of maths genius, but I guess there must have been maybe two hundred or so, all dangling from the end of improvised nooses. Ropes, a few chains and packing ties, the sorts I used to secure crates with, as well as thick wires and cabling. All improvised into this mass suicide of almost half of the people that had been in the bunker before the biomass overran us.

"How could they do this?" I muttered to myself, behind me Vasily looked like he was about to vomit, and Dakker was feverishly crossing himself, as if he could somehow block out the horrors before him.

Delov however was silent, looking around and glancing behind us, ignoring the forest of the dead beyond as if it was nothing. He turned to me and said calmly.

"We're being followed."

I didn't share the man's confidence and whirled around, revolver raised. I felt strangely impotent after losing my RPK running from Vlasov, but, as I got a good look at the figures running toward us, I realised we really needed to go and not even think of fighting them. They were heavily armed, huge Pecheneg LMG's in hand, decked out in thick body armour and helmets. I dint care how they had got here ,or why they were here. I knew that only one group in this hell would still have that kind of equipment, and still be alive to use it.

Spetnatz.

I was running even before the first bullets began to fly, all thoughts of loyalty to the others or my status as their leader lost as I ran from these soldiers that ,despite everything, the apocalypse, the biomass, plague and all out civil war ,just came back to kill us once more.

I barely noticed Vasily take a bullet to the leg as he turned to fight them, or even Dakker and Delov sprinting after me. My only thoughts were survival as I pounded along the cold steel walkway, the welcoming form of a steel armoured door only metres away, bullets ricocheting off the side of it and bouncing across the cavernous space.

As I hurled myself into it, the others still running toward me, the Spetnatz not far behind, I glanced up at the bodies overhead, and saw that many of them had green splashes of biomass clinging to their sides.

"Keep going!" I shouted, letting off a few shots at the armoured Spetnatz, who barely even flinched at the rounds spinning past them, and then suddenly an idea popped into my head. Something completely crazy, ridcoulous, and utterly cold blooded.

Ignoring the crushing moral conseuquences, I took aim at one of the thick ropes holding a bloated corpse aloft, took a deep breath, and then fired.

The effect was instant as the pale corpse fell onto the Spetnatz below, the luminescent green biomass instantly latching onto the mask of the lead soldier, who dropped his gun and swore, only for his comrade to ram his machete into his friend's head. By then though, it was too late for them too as more biomass began to fall from the bodies above, a weird green rain falling upon them, burying them as they howled through their gas masks.

The last I saw before the others fell into the dark room beyond and Vasily slammed the door was countless drops of biomass falling from the ceiling, and the last Spetnatz soldier pull his sidearm from his holster and blow his brains out.

The corridors beyond were only dimly lit by our torches as we continued our long march to get out of this nightmare. All of us were shaken by what had just happened, Vasily barely upright after we patched up the bullet wound in his leg, only a graze fortunately, or else we would probably have just had to mercy kill him then and there. We had no time to stop.

This area seemed less affected than the horror that we had left behind in the Atrium, but we were still on edge. The evidence of a failed last stand was everywhere. Trashed barricades and abandoned crates stalled our progress, whilst a few broken rifles clattered under my feet as I clambered up a dim stairwell, my heart heavy at the nightmares that I just couldn't dispel. The executions, the madness, the death, all blended into one unending cycle of bloodshed and terror. Only one thought kept me going, kept me sane.

We would soon be out of here.

"The Command Centres not far boys." I said with a weak smile. "From there it's a straight shot across the upper levels of the Atrium and to the trains. From there, we should be out of here within the hour."

The only response from the others was a grunt of approval. I hadn't excepted much from them. They were practically dead men walking. From here, they couldn't see any future for themselves beyond living in some dark Metro tunnel, drinking water out of old sewer pipes and huddling around weak camp fires for the rest of our lives.

They became more animated as we came closer to the Command Centre. At first I put it down to just the thought of escape. Then I heard the voice.

It didn't sound entirely natural, too high pitched and manic to be the sound of a normal human being, and I noticed the others gripping their weapons much tighter as we came to the armoured door of the Command Centre, Vasily and Dakker taking up positions either side as I keyed in the code, unchanged since the bombs dropped .050713. The fifth of March 2013. The day the old world died.

We entered the room quickly, momnetarily blinded by the bright light, only regaining my vision as I saw the occupants of the room revealed.

At least twenty bodies lay in the large open space, all of them officers, some slumped at monitors, others crumpled in corners, a few AKs and Makarov pistols scattered on the floor around them.

Dakker quickly examined one of the bodies, a pale faced captain with a shocked look on his dead features, mask lying next to him, but it hadn't been the gas which killed him.

"Pistol rounds." He said softly. "9x18mm cartridge to be exact. Makarov bullets…" he added grimly.

"Antonov." I said instantly, my weapon up in a heartbeat, ready to put a round in the sadistic fuck's face.

That is, until another voice piped up, the same manic one we had heard a minute ago.

"Close…but no cigar Major."

As I heard that voice I lowered my weapon, and shrunken figure appeared in the shadows by the static filled main screen.

"Doctor Talos?" I said softly, and he nodded, grinning crazily as he walked towards us, a pistol shoved in the pocket of his ragged uniform. He didn't make it another step before a shot rang out overhead and Delov stumbled forward, levelling his AK.

"Back you little shit!" he roared, but there was fear in his eyes as well. "Are you infected?"

"My friend…" the doctor began but Delov cut him off.

"I said, are you infected! Answer me or I'll put a bullet between those crazy eyes of yours, biomass or not!"

Talos only shrugged and collapsed into a chair, glancing at the body next to him.

"No Captain I am not. Although to be honest, it wouldn't make a difference. We're all going to die anyway…"

It was now that I cut in, and the doctor only looked on indifferently, drumming a finger against the side of his gas mask.

"What do you mean? We're getting out of here Talos. You can come with us if you want, to the Metro, to freedom!"

"Freedom!" Talos spat. "When was the last time you had any sort of freedom, eh? When Antonov was shooting down rebels? Or when the Spetnatz purged the Medical Wing? Or maybe when the FSB started making people 'disappear'? Yes, that's freedom for you there… And you really think the outside worlds going to be any better? That somehow you and your friends here will build a new society, free from the problems of the old world? Look what happened here… Complete safety from bombs and radiation, from the outside world. Enough supplies to keep us going forever!"

He paused and sighed, glancing at the pistol in his pocket.

"What did we do eh? We fucked it up! We turned on each other! Started killing for no reason, fighting whilst the rest of the world burned in nuclear fire. Had petty wars over nothing and fought over insults and disagreement like fucking Neanderthals. And,you know what? The real funny part of this. It was all avoidable. We're soldiers, men trained for combat and trauma, to take it all in our stride and uphold our duty. You really think the rest of the world could do any better, where we failed? That somewhere in those dark tunnels, it's all utopia and singing around campfires in old Metro stations! You're as deluded as Antonov was…"

I took a breath, noticed the other's faith in the plan starting to crack.

"Look, you don't have to come Talos. You can rot in this ruin for as long as you want but we're getting out of here! Now, wheres Antonov? He must have been here. This place is full of his victims."

Talos didn't look at me, only stared blankly at the screen in front of him, and then spoke again, softer than before.

"He was here. Antonov. We thought we were safe you know? Better the devil you know. We thought, with those armoured doors there and the leadership of Antonov, we could survive, get out of here and regroup…"

His face darkened.

"We were wrong."

He nodded at the closed doors behind us, Dakker nervously standing by them with his rifle at the ready.

"Soon as those doors were shut ,we were all ready to hear him speak. That's when it happened. The bastard only paused to put a lockdown protocol in effect, then all hell broke loose. It was a slaughter. Antonov was a monster, tearing off people's masks like a man possessed, letting them writhe in pain at the gas, still seeping in through the cracks in the door's armour plating. Sometimes he would put a bullet in them after, save them the pain. Others? Well, you can see for yourself."

As I looked at the bodies ,I noticed most had no marks on them beyond the masks torn from their faces, and their expression of absolute pain and betrayal.

"No one could stop him." Talos added. "He was just too fast, too strong. He was less man, more demon. A few resisted, and they were the first to go. Others just gave up, sat on the floor and wept as he killed their friends. I saw one man, one massive bastard, Captain Olvin, you remember him? Used to be a professional wrestler. The Red Terror?"

He laughed, but there was no humour behind it.

"He was one of the last to go, might have been the last I don't know… He pleaded with Antonov, begged him, pulled out a crumpled photo of him with his wife and two kids, and was crying about how he needed to go find them, that they might still be alive."

I was sure I saw a tear roll down the doctor's face and he nodded towards a corpse in the corner, the massive form of Olvin spread eagled over a toppled desk.

"His wife was very beautiful…" he said softly, then looked me in the face finally, his expression grim but defiant. "I don't know why he spared me. Maybe he saw a kindred spirit, a fellow member of the insane asylum that we call D6?

He laughed, a horrific high pitched giggle that seemed to echo all around us.

"He just walked away, after shoving his pistol into Olvin's mouth, disengaged the lockdown and walked out of here, his hands stained crimson…"

He stood up, the small black Makarov now in his hand.

"Don't you see Videnski? We can't win. Not against monsters like that. You might as well just turn those fancy guns on youselves. Spare Antonov the pleasure."

He turned away, and I was about to motion to Dakker and the others we should leave, when he glanced back.

"You know what the real funny thing is… That actually, all of it might have been irrelevant. The bloodshed, the civil war, all of that shit, it might have just been that much more bearable. If only those fucking scientists hadn't doomed us all to oblivion with that super weapon of theirs…"

I turned away, Dakker keying in the code to open the door. There was nothing for us here, except one man lost in his own madness.

As I left that bloodstained command room, Talos spoke one more time, laughing slightly as he said.

"You could say the whole project has gone horribly right eh? They wanted a sueprweapon. They got it!"

The last I saw of Doctor Talos as the doors closed for the last time was him giggling again, pressing his Makarov to his head and watching us go.

As we hastened across the catwalk towards the monorail station, I heard a single muffled gunshot.

"So ends D6." I muttered to myself, as the monorail slipped into the empty station and we ran on-board, practically collapsing into the hard plastic chairs and the train silently left the ruins of D6 far behind.

"We did it! We fucking did it!" Delov was shouting, punching the air.

Vasily meanwhile enveloped me and Dakker in a crushing bear hug, lifting both of us off the floor, barely noticing the pain in his leg.

"We actually did it my friends!" he laughed, releasing us and grinning as he pulled an old bottle of vodka from his pack.

"When we get away from this nerve gas!" he laughed "We are getting fucking pissed!"

We all laughed. It seemed like we had done it, that we were actually escaping this nightmare.

The train ride was a short but jubilant one, the others all talking about what we should do after we left the staion, even the normally morose Delov chipping into the crazy plans of ,as Dakker put it 'money, bitches and guns'.

For some reason, I couldn't share their jubilance. My own thoughts were dark as the train began to roll into the old Holding Area, the ruins of the Spetnatz fortress visible monetarily, the ragged Ultranationalist banner and clumps of bleached skeletons lit up for a second then lost as the train sped through the tunnel.

The station we came to was silent, but still filled with the omnipresent nerve gas.

"Masks on boys…" I ordered as I stepped off the train, the others taking up positions around me. "Only a bit further to go."

Past the station it was the familiar oppressive claustrophobia of the Holding Area that greeted us, the myriad dormitories and storerooms we had once used now empty and dark.

It didn't take us long to reach the exit, and I felt a collective sigh of relief from the rest of the group, and myself, be released.

"Dakker, get the switch on the side." I said shortly, and he practically sprinted into the old guardhouse, and was about to flip the switch when I heard an all to familiar voice break our collective good mood in only four words.

"Well, this is unexpected."

I turned in an instant, as the familiar figure of Antonov shambled out of the darkness, his Makarov raised.

"Antonov…?" Dakker began, reappearing from the guardroom, having abandoned the switch as soon as he heard that voice.

He never spoke again. Antonov's shot hit him straight between the eyes, and he fell to the floor in a second.

"That's Lieutenant Colonel!" Antonov roared, almost too crazily, even for him, and that's when I was afraid, especially when he merely grinned, running a hand through his grey hair.

Even for Antonov, the figure before us just looked insane.

His uniform, always so neat and pristine, was more ragged and torn than even the corpses we had seen before, deep gouges carved into it, but too small and random to have been done with anything other than his own fingernails, which were covered in dried blood, just as Talos had said. His skin was ashen, almost pure white, all the colour lost ,whilst his hair looked to be falling out, bald patches visible all over his head. But his face was the worst bit, or rather his eyes. A deep black, his pupils unnaturally large, and the only thing I could find in those dark pools was pure unbridled…

Insanity.

"Look, colonel, we're just going to leave now…."I said softly, hoping I came across as trustworthy, even though I still had my revolver pointed at him.

"No!" he roared, then softer. "No…no one is leaving this place! I will not allow it! The quarantine must be preserved! The lockdown must not fail!"

"Lieutenant…" Delov said slowly, but he too was cut off.

"The quarantine!" he shrieked again, waving his pistol, but then added. "Did I ever tell you the full story of the lockdown?"

I shook my head.

"Well then Major Videnski, let me enlighten you… Maybe you can write it in that fucking diary of yours. It was the day, the 5th of July, when I saw my boy shot down on the streets of Moscow, when bombs rained hell upon the world, that I got that call. It was command, telling me the true nature of those scientists ,and they weapon they were creating. They told me…they told me, if anything happened, anything! That they would know, and they would use an automatic system to overload the reactor and cause a meltdown; wipe us out! Irony eh?" he said with a smirk. "I knew this couldn't happen, I couldn't let my boys all die like cowards! That's why I got…angry. When I decided I had to do everything in my power to stop that happening. And I knew that, if anything happened ,and if people escaped, they would know! Those bastards in the government bunker under the Kremlin would push the button, and we would all die! That's why I did it, that's why I had the Spetnatz kill anyone who tried to get out, and why I can't let you out now!"

Delov was the first to respond, taking a step toward the crazed colonel.

"But it's over now Antonov! Those fucks under the Kremlin are all dead by now! You think that biomass was the only experiments they had? I bet it wasn't the worst either… Now, we are leaving, no matter what you say!"

And with that he raised his rifle and fired a burst, taking off a chunk of Antonov's forehead in a blaze of gunfire.

"We go now!"

No sooner had we turned though, than one more noise invaded the silence. Not the biomass, or the Spetnatz ,or anything else. Just one, even more impossible, sound.

Antonov's laughter.

I watched in horror then, as the insane man lifted himself off the floor, grinning,and calmly putting a bullet in Delov's face.

I watched Delov fall, his expression the same as those we had seen on the men in the control room, the men who had all fallen to this one man, who had somehow survived whatever they threw at him. And now, as he I looked at Antonov rise from the blood-stained floor ,I knew why.

Because there, nestled where part of his head should be, a shifting mass of luminescent green slowly pulsated.

"It's you Antonov!" I bellowed, my revolver aimed at him. "You're the one who was corrupted, and you're the one who must be destroyed!"

But he only grinned.

"Really? I'd like to see you try…"

And with that he began to walk towards us, and I saw the green patches in his skin as his uniform billowed around his emaciated form, the mutation even now beginning to overtake his body.

"Let me embrace you Josef…" he said softly, and I realised there was nothing I could do, and it appeared Vasily had as well, as his gun clattered to the floor.

Then I heard the hum of steel being drawn, and saw Vasily draw his machete from its leather holster.

"No!" I began, but the old soldier merely winked at me, saying softly.

"If its hostile, you kill it…"

Then he was running forward ,blade held in both hands, bringing it down for a single sweeping blow.

Antonov tried to stop him, slamming a hand into Vasily's masked face, but the man was too strong, and kept pushing the blade down until, with a sickening crack and spurt of blood, Antonov fell silent, and Vasily held aloft the man's head in one, blood drenched, hand.

I started forward ,but Vasily stopped me, and I knew why in an instant, as I already saw the green mass beginning to invade his body.

He turned to me, as he staggered towards a rusted generator, dropping Antonov's head next to him as he tore off his gas mask and lay down by it.

"What are you…?"

"Go sir!" he ordered "Now! Find the people in those tunnels! But never forget! Never forget D6!"

And with that I turned away, tears in my eyes, and heard him began to convulse and writhe in pain, as the gas tore him apart.

I began to walk away, opening the vast armoured door and stepping out into the cool dark of the Metro, checking my kit and the single revolver at my hip.

I was ready.

And, for one last time, as I set the door to close after me, I glanced back at the pitch black of the bunker, and noticed a strange peace in the air, a quiet and strange reverence at being away from that place once and for all. And over it all. The silence.

Silence in D6.


	33. Epilogue

**A/N This is just a little something I wrote up after the ending,a sort of epilogue type thing, if anyone wanted to see whether Josef really did get his happy ending. As always,thanks to everyone who read and reviewed, its been a pleasure! If you want anymore horror like this,check out my other fics for the Walking Dead and Twilight. Anyway, thanks for reading,and I hope you enjoy it...**

* * *

25th June 2013

It took me a few days of stumbling through almost pitch black tunnels before I saw anything resembling civilisation in anyway. Luckily the dim electric lights in most of the tunnels were still working, although the only real light came from my head torch. I was breathing heavily the entire time, even the stuffy underground air better than the recycled shit in my gasmask, which is now safely strapped to my hip, along with my trusty revolver.

There was no noise in the tunnels, beyond the odd drip of water and clatter of pipes. At one point I thought I heard voices, but they turned out to be nothing. Probably something in the pipes.

The weird thing though wasn't the lack of noise, the absence of the familiar rattle of trains along the steel rails, not even the strange mushrooms already beginning to sprout from the black ballast. It was the lights.

At first I thought I was hallucinating, when I first saw the weird shadows on the walls, illuminated in my torch beams like ghosts.

Then they began to speak.

I was running after that, sprinting for over an hour through gloomy passages and abandoned Metro trains, surprisingly empty for some reason.

Then I saw the light up ahead, and I felt my heart race.

Real humans!

Not crazed madmen or monsters. Just normal, living, sane men and women.

When two unshaven men with hunting rifles challenged me by a crude barricade, I practically fell into them, almost embraced the two stinking guards, who only waved me through with a sigh of relief.

Beyond that was the station and, as soon as I stepped into the warm glow of oil lamps and charcoal lanterns, I knew I had finally reached somewhere I hadn't been in a long time.

Home.

The station wasn't exactly huge, only a few platforms and a warren of offices and stroerooms, but to me it was perfect. Here I knew there were no mutants or crazed soldiers. The packed station buzzed with conversation, people somehow getting on with their lives, only a month after the fall of the old world. I saw families gathered around campfires, solemn faced men with scavenged AKs keeping watch, whilst others hurried past, carrying heavy crates of supplies or talking to one another, speaking of scavenging and farming, guns and ammunition, warm beds and firewood.

It almost seemed alien to me, after the fascist dictatorship I had suffered under for what felt like forvever, to suddenly see this new world built under the ruins of the old one, it was actually very calming. To think that, above this weird scene of normal life in an abnormal setting, was nothing but radioactive wasteland and skeletons.

After the nightmare of D6 though, it was perfect.

As I walked down the main platform, past men setting up tables and building crude shelters and tents, I felt eyes upon me. Not in a sinister way, there were no FSB agents or Spetnatz thugs here. These were eyes wide with curiosity, and a bit of fear, but no malice. I was merely a new arrival and a soldier at that, something I doubted many of these people had seen for a long time.

But I ignored the stares, the whispered comments and giggling children, as I walked down the platform. I had eyes for only one thing. A figure, huddled by a campfire with a group of others, a ragged green coat wrapped around her slight frame, laughing as an old man strummed a tune on an old guitar. I would have recognised her anywhere, the long, jet black hair, the pale and pretty face, the high pitched laugh. The one person in the whole world I thought I would never see again, and there she was, only a few metres away.

Katerina.

She hadn't noticed me yet, and I practically ran over, tapping her lightly on the shoulder. As she turned to look at me I was already in heaven. Apocalypse or not, I was alive, and she was alive, and that was all that mattered.

The rest of the day was a blur of new people, new places, and a new home. And now I sit writing this all down, a cracked mug of mushroom derived vodka in my other hand and Katerina by my side, staring down a quiet tunnel, lit by hundreds of tiny candles like some post-apocalyptic fairy tale. There are a few other guards here, which I seem to have suddenly become leader of, mainly because everyone here is convinced I'm a former special forces colonel or something, a promotion I've been quick to take up. Now I outrank my entire old battalion.

For the first time since I left my apartment at the beginning of June, I can finally say I am happy. Of course I'm not complacent. Anything could happen in this new world, but I've already seen enough horror to know that nothing can be worse than what happened in that bunker. Still, anything could happen. Antonov may be dead, but others, just as crazy, may have escaped that hellhole. Maybe one day I'll return there and finish the job, destroy it and reclaim its secrets.

And that leads me to my final point of today, because my shift is almost over, and my rest tonight will be all the better with Katerina beside me. Already someone's strumming a tune on a guitar, and people are playing a hand of poker by the fire. I've decided that, now Katerina is with me, I can't risk being found by some crazed D6 survivor with a grudge, and the best way to do that is to get a new name. I never liked Videnski anyway, too pretentious for my liking. And a new name is exactly the thing I need to start a new life down here. It took a bit of negotiation with Katerina, because she's getting the same surname too, but I finally decided on one, after I remembered the insane Spetnatz commander, and his opposite principled younger brother, lying dead in the ruins of the Lenin Library. I guess I'm taking up his mantle now, and making it official as I finish. So now I'm signing off as my new name, my new life begins.

Colonel Josef Miller.

Has a bit of a ring to it…


End file.
